



Copyright ! 1 ) 0 

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THE EMOTIONALIST 



THE EMOTIONALIST 

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The Romance of an Awakening 
to Temperament 


STANLEY OLMSTED 

AUTHOR OF “THE NONCHALANTE ” 



D. APPLETON & COMPANY 
NEW YORK 
1908 



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Copyright, 1908, by 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 


Published October, 190& 


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EDYTH WALKER 


Who, as singer in the Royal Opera 
of Vienna, very possibly came 
into contact with Victoria Furman 



1 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I. — A Moon and a Lantern .... 

II. — “When Victoria Goes a-Singing” 

III. — Dolls, Sawdust, and Emotions; To- 

gether with What the Birds May 
Accomplish 

IV. — The Definition of not Putting it Defi- 

nitely 

V. — The Biography of an Attachment — a 

Practice Cadenza 

VI. — A Vocal Lesson — the Sky Versus a 

Garden Rose 

VII. — A Musicale: Wherein Another Sings — 
and Victoria Sings .... 

VIII. — Within the Temple of Trees, and Out 

Again ! 

IX. — On the Bruhlische Terasse, Whence 
Mrs. Churchill- Aldrich Defines an 
Emotionalist 

X. — In which Georgia Reads Leconte de 

Lisle in New York Town . 

XI. — Veering to Victoria, who Finds a Com- 

patriot, with Caviar and a Half-Liter 

XII. — Keeping to Victoria, who will Live Up 
to what She Must Live Out 

XIII. — The Turquoise Blouse — and the Mili- 

tar 

vii 


PAGE 

I 

II 

20 

30 

40 

57 

/ 

70 

82 

106 

120 

141 

153 

161 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

XIV. — In which for Thirty Seconds Vic- 
toria is Temperamental . . .172 

XV. — In which One Hears Again How Vic- 
toria Sang Before the Emperor . . 186 

XVI. — Broadway and Its Revelations; Inci- 
dentally the Cafe Martin . . . 202 

XVII— White Illusion 217 

XVIII. — The Playwright, and the California 

Star 229 


XIX. — The Rialto and Manhattan, with a 

Discourse on Opportunity . . . 238 

XX. — In which Moralization Succeeds De- 
cision 249 

XXI. — Poison with Homeopathic Antidote, and 

Heroic Cure 257 

XXII. — From the Rain, and the Silence, and 

the Sound of the Sea .... 280 
XXIII.— The Hesitation of a Knight Errant, 
with the Poetry of Turquoise Silk, 


and Temperament Defined . . . 296 

XXIV. — Surrender and Triumph .... 309 
XXV.— From the Stage Door, Thrown Suddenly 

Wide 319 

XXVI. — Surrender Once Again, and Sacrifice 331 
XXVII. — Finale: Walkuren Calls and the All- 

Surmounting Sky .... 339 


vm 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


i 

A MOON AND A LANTERN 

Aldrich had been directed to call for Miss 
Low some time before dark, after his own sup- 
per at the Pension Schramm. These twilights 
were interminable in the mid-Saxon June, and 
he gave himself no haste as he strolled about the 
woods skirting Blasewitz. A single turn at any 
time, with a few steps along some festooned rec- 
tangle of streets, would bring him to the deep 
garden inclosing the villa of Fraulein Ackern, 
whither Miss Low had been bidden to five o’clock 
coffee and the evening meal following upon it: 
bidden, in short, for the long end of the afternoon. 

Aldrich looked carelessly along an undeflected 
walk to a single glimpse of the Elbe, some half- 
mile away, across certain indefinite fields of hay 
and plummet edges of pine trees. He knew Miss 
Low expected him just about now; but the streak 
of steely level, with mid-distances bisected in 
I 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


vague grassy odors, gave a weak pull which yet 
carried him to the end of the tree-strip. The 
fields lost their lure forthwith, and the hills over 
the river were ingloriously banned in terms of 
the swimming houses at their base : for the even- 
ing magnified rather than softened them, in a 
pitiless ivory of waning light. Straightway he 
turned with decision. In five minutes he had 
reached Fraulein Ackern’s gate. 

Aldrich was a newcomer in Blasewitz, and he 
paused midway down the garden walk to clench 
his certainty of the place. There was an awned 
balcony jutting from the second* story above the 
front door. He must be right : Fraulein Acker n’s 
villa had been pointed out to him a day or so be- 
fore, so he had not even glanced at the porcelain 
number among the vines on the outer wall. In 
the instant of his hesitation a woman looked down 
upon him from the balcony. She leaned forward 
and smiled. 

“ I cannot be mistaken," he said, acknowledg- 
ing the tacit inquiry of cordial eyes. “ This is 
where I was to find Miss Low, I believe ? ” 

The cordial eyes brightened and took posses- 
sion. 

“ Now, now — she's here safe," came the reply 
— with other banter seemingly near the surface; 
but the spare figure of Fraulein Ackern herself 


2 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


interrupted. Her piercing look transfixed the sit- 
uation with vigilant chaperonage : 

“ Herr Aldrich, is it not ? ” She nodded for- 
mally. “ Miss Low is there.” 

“ Well — I am, too, I suppose,” Aldrich af- 
firmed in high good humor, returning the bow. 
“ You will kindly tell her that.” 

Fraulein Ackern turned with evident inten- 
tion of literally following his instructions. 

“ But, Fraulein Sister,” cried the other, “ there 
are strawberries left — strawberries to burn ! And 
if you’ll introduce the Herr I can invite him 


“To eat them down ” terminated Aldrich. 

“ Yes, yes — excuse! ” Fraulein Ackern has- 
tened, against their laughter, her jet eyes reconcil- 
ing the inevitable with a neat concession from 
dignity. “ Allow me, Herr Aldrich, that I should 
present Miss Furman. She also is Amerika- 
nerin.” 

“ Which astonishes you, of course,” said Miss 
Furman. “ Now do come up.” 

“ Have — the — honor ! ” returned Aldrich, 
thinking German into English. Miss Low was 
evidently indoors, else surely she, too, would have 
appeared from under the awning: the observa- 
tion came to him as he stepped forward following 
the instruction of Miss Furman’s gesture. For 


3 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


the rest, his thoughts had a tangible feel of infla- 
tion, as though pumped out, in some wise, with 
sudden wine. Yet was he none so obsessed that 
the thing passed his understanding. The sort of 
pleasant stimulus aroused by new personalities 
like Miss Furman’s was not an altogether unique 
experience. All the more, then, was it choice in 
that he diagnosed it relatively. The neophyte’s 
appreciation must exceed that of the fanatic. 

Indeed, in the first instant, and at her first word, 
he had figuratively closed an extended hand which 
for an hour past he had held open. The glow 
of a new grip went to his pulse, but he could have 
fanned it in cool adjectives, placing her as opu- 
lent, vital, and irregular — the last without offense. 
He might even have detailized her white muslin 
— polka dotted ? — swathing sleek lines of bust and 
hip. Muslin, frequently diaphanous, is not always 
so; and hers was not. Through its film, you 
prophesied her in tailor-cut and broadcloth. The 
softening twilight had put her at what a photo- 
graphic retoucher might consider her best. Yet 
Aldrich had further estimated the surcharge of 
a sort of riper girlishness neutralizing, as he be- 
lieved, features large and strong. Just how much 
so broad daylight only could determine. And 
somehow for all that, she challenged broad day- 
light with a fine defiance of bold contours. 

4 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Aldrich found Miss Low, a well-nigh over- 
looked object of his quest, waiting at the head of 
the stairs. 

“ I heard voices on the balcony just now, and 
knew it must be you.” She gave him both her 
hands. 

“ But where were you ? ” he inquired. 

“ Oh, I do as I like at Fraulein Ackern’s, you 
know. She and Miss Furman sometimes let me 
have the prints and porcelains and symphony 
scores all to myself when I convince them how 
much I like it.” 

“ We’re lazier,” came Victoria Furman’s deep 
gurgle from the veranda door behind. “ We sit 
and moon, waiting for the moon to come up and 
join us.” 

Out on the balcony where supper had been 
served, Fraulein Ackern directed him to a steamer 
chair placed right-about-face for the expected 
lunar spectacle. Already a fanfare of scarlet over 
behind certain villas and trees heralded its serene 
entrance with the rather inappropriate pomp pecu- 
liar to June. From the supper table the damask 
had not yet been removed and a huge bowl of 
strawberries remained in isolation, with satellites 
of cream pitchers and sugar bowl. 

Miss Furman was heaping a saucer for Aldrich. 
“ You must eat ’em up or it will be a sacrilege,” 

5 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


she exclaimed, turning and raking the red abun- 
dance with a spoon. “ See, see ! ” 

“ Don’t make me see so many at once,” objected 
Aldrich. 

“ Think he can finish them for us? ” Miss Fur- 
man addressed Miss Low. 

“ He can approximate, I believe — with straw- 
berries ” Miss Low hesitated on one of her 

little smiles. 

“ Georgia won’t desert me on that verdict,” 
said Aldrich, “ having once fed them to me in 
college days.” 

Miss Furman thought it “ sounded interest- 
ing.” 

“ The fact is,” he explained, as airily as the nec- 
essary huddle over his strawberry dish allowed, 
“ everybody has to be discovered, you know ? 
And Miss Low,” he waved the spoon in his freer 
hand, “ once gave me the experimental range of 
her private patch over in New Hampshire.” 

“ Yes,” admitted Miss Low. “ It was long 
ago.” 

“ Though I didn’t mean to emphasize that part 
of it!” 

“ You were already in long trousers, even if 
you do get taller,” Miss Low parried. “ Have I 
such ground for sensitiveness ! ” She had an 
habitual silvery laugh on a grading of infectious- 
6 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


ness. It caught her words now at the end, and 
Aldrich glanced up as for renewed identity in the 
familiar. It was become his unconscious habit to 
raise thus an eyelash when she laughed, as though 
in vague arrest at some problem of quantity and 
quality. 

A maidservant summoned by Fraulein Ackern 
was hanging a Japanese lantern from the awning 
strip; some of its orange color crept alive against 
a thin undulation in Miss Low’s hair, ash-blond 
by daylight, transforming it to a deliberate yel- 
low; offsetting the rest of her in effacement. The 
same illumination, mingled somewhat with lamp- 
light from within, defined Victoria Furman, on 
the other hand, in a positive scale of reds and 
blow-pinks. Above the sheeted salmon of her 
transfigured muslin her hair was heavy copper 
beneath which her eyes glowed out, contradicting 
restiveness with sheer force. They burned all at 
once upon Fraulein Ackern, singling out the in- 
tenser note of her passivity. 

“ And Fraulein Little-Sister,” she said, moving 
closer to the German woman. “ Fraulein Little- 
Sister is thinking only of our solemn-choly talk 
when der Herr interrupted us.” 

Fraulein Ackem’s clasped hands tightened in 
her lap, in a sort of tense resignation. “ I cannot 
be gay already, as I ought to could,” she said, 

7 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


looking at Aldrich abysmally from straight black 
brows; “ I lose Miss Furman so soon.” 

Aldrich balanced his dish to a pause of inquiry. 

“ I should perhaps yet explain,” added Fraulein 
Ackern, “ how I first adopt Miss Furman, and 
then surrender her to the world after I get accus- 
tomed not to do without her.” 

“ How many months — let's see,” interrupted 
Miss Furman. “ I came to you, Schwesterlein, 
in September! September, October, November.” 
She told them off on her fingers as a woman will 
in preference to the simple sum in subtraction. 
“ Why, it’s almost a year ! Who'd believe it ? ” 

“ Did you say ‘ adopted ’ ? ” inquired Aldrich, 
probing at the always possible literalness of the 
German way of putting it. 

“ Not quite that; I am too old, I guess,” Miss 
Furman put in. “ But it amounts to the same 
thing, doesn't it, Schwesterlein ? ” She drew 
Fraulein Ackern's long vein-ribbed hand against 
her cheek. The gesture seemed neither impulsive 
nor yet calculated. Aldrich would have pro- 
nounced it more as offhanded habit. 

Habit or impulse, it had its sufficient meaning 
for Fraulein Ackern, who heaved responsively, 
like one suppressing a sigh. 

“ It is strange,” she said; “ Miss Furman is an 
artist, and so I work harder to give her up to 
8 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


the art than I work to keep her for me. I work 
harder that she may go find her art than she works 
that she may get away to her art.” Fraulein 
Ackern had unconsciously glided from her 
unhesitant English to her more fluent German. 
“ It is strange,” she repeated, “ that I should do 
that.” 

“ It's your justice,” said Aldrich. “ You want 
Miss Furman, but you think art has a prior 
claim.” 

“ And now we're both blue,” said Miss Furman. 
“ It's very nice here with Fraulein Little-Sister. 
And I’m positively certain there's no cook like 
hers in all Vienna. O Schwesterlein — Schwester- 
lein — I don’t believe I'll go ! Why should I ? ” 

The moon now had a full disc. The four of 
them watched it complete an act of extrication 
from a tree fork. 

“ It stares us out of countenance,” Aldrich 
said, at length. 

Fraulein Ackern, who had gazed ahead most 
steadily, was on the instant back to her theme, 
and in English. 

“ It's so very bad afternoons when we are alone 
and think! ” The little Teuton twirls in her r's 
had tragic emphasis which did not overdo the 
note of sincerity. Aldrich thought that feminine 
loneliness was never more apparent than when it 

9 


2 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


cloaked itself in some such factitious illusion of 
gain and loss. 

He was familiar with some of the circum- 
stances alluded to. On his arrival at the Pension 
Schramm, a few days before, Miss Low had told 
him of Fraulein Ackern’s fad, or discovery, or 
philanthropy, as you might choose to regard it. 
Having met this Fraulein Ackern, though super- 
ficially enough, on a former sojourn in Dresden, 
he was not incapable of casual interest. He had 
recalled her with a little effort to be sure; fond 
of Americans, somberly attending their afternoon 
teas, with her rigid high-German manner and 
contradictory breadth of outlook, born, he had no 
doubt, of inner intensities. 

For a woman’s soul would writhe free of that 
convention of which she could never fight shy. 
(Had it been Fraulein Ackern or someone else 
he had so paraphrased?) At all events he had 
felt some expansion of reminiscent contact while 
Miss Low had recounted, sparingly, how this 
Fraulein Ackern was interesting herself, and em- 
ploying her means in behalf of a young American 
girl with a remarkable contralto voice. Fraulein 
Ackern was emphasized on his retrospection; he 
could now recall how she had been said to be 
as free of choice among her Americans, as relent- 
less of exclusions among her Germans. 

io 


II 


" WHEN VICTORIA GOES A-SINGING " 

The gifted Amerikanerin of Fraulein Ackern’s 
patronage had, it appeared, long fought the cur- 
rent, and taken the wind in her teeth, with little 
of ballast. To be sure one might hold in ac- 
count the undeniable portent of free vocal lessons 
daily from a great and well-nigh inaccessible ex- 
opera star. Miss Furman was a pupil of the Bar- 
oness Lubke. For any pupil of Baroness Lubke’s 
there was, of course, a certain prestige and an 
occasional local concert date. Moreover, the Bar- 
oness nested a large brood of celebrities, made 
and in the making, at her musicales and soirees. 
It was at one of these affairs that Fraulein Ackern 
had personally requested a presentation of the 
newest : Miss Victoria, herself, with whose sing- 
ing she had been charmed. A propitious meeting. 
Not long afterward the well-to-do German spin- 
ster had taken the American girl completely to her 
heart, which superimposed a residence in her 
comfortable villa-house in Blasewitz. And as if 
it might never rain but it must pour, an opera 


II 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


engagement had been secured by the American 
girl not so very many months later — an engage- 
ment too tardy to be the manna from Heaven it 
would have been a year previous; hence a sort 
of test of ambition versus comfortable idleness. 

In this quiet and very offhand narrative from 
Miss Low, Aldrich had felt the elimination of 
detail almost with a pang. It was a sort of story 
for which he was always alert. No promising 
element was lacking. Yet something in Miss 
Low’s presupposition of its unimportance checked 
him, as her methods in imparting values so often 
did. Miss Low’s finer selections among daily 
contacts were become somewise his tests in self- 
discipline. 

Sitting back in his steamer chair with these 
contrasted woman personalities about him, and 
the mis-en-scene of moon, and Japanese lantern, 
he smiled now, recalling with what studied lei- 
sureliness he had turned away toward the Elbe a 
half-hour ago; how little he had believed his ad- 
justed interests in any way concerned. He rec- 
ognized it as an instance of how he managed to 
fasten to Miss Low’s suppler sophistications, until 
he ended by reflecting them. Without a throb or 
any knowledge of a throb at least, he had drifted 
indifferently into the gifted Amerikanerin’s orbit 
scarcely reminding himself it was she, when she 


12 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


first stood before him, or above him, unmistak- 
ably, in the flesh. And now her orbit was dis- 
tinctly the world of his present moment. With 
a little inward wry ness, for himself to be sure, he 
was smiling, in sheer exultance, at a thrill, pecu- 
liar, and novel, and positively expected, though 
not looked for. 

Miss Furman was holding the conversation 
with an account of the work before her as con- 
tralto of the Royal Opera in Vienna. This work 
would begin the last week in August, she said, 
but she would have to be there beforehand — 
so much must be arranged. They would start 
the Fall Repertoire with occasional performances 
of “ Hansel and Gretel” and she had been directed 
to “ prepare the mother ” in this opera as her first 
part. 

“ Only one solo,” she was saying; “ mean inter- 
vals for singing — you wouldn’t think it, would 
you ? But they’re all askew ; and the ugly old 
peasant woman make-up, of course ! Every poor 
alto has to do a lot of those things, while the 
soprans kite around in the foreground.” 

She underscored the hopelessness of the thing 
with a catch of her under lip. 

“ One might learn the trade, being a contralto,” 
said Aldrich, “ and then turn soprano afterward.” 

The opera candidate raised significant eye- 
13 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


brows. “ Just watch me,” she said, with the 
manner of a weighty secret divulged; “ just wait, 
and watch me catch for high notes ! ” 

“ Baroness Lubke must elongate her cadenzas 
at all both the ends/’ Fraulein Ackern informed 
them very seriously. “ Miss Furman can sing 
high like a soprano, already.” 

“ If you don’t make her keep it up too long,” 
Miss Furman explained. “ That’s the hardest of 
everything — keeping it up too long ! ” 

Miss Low saw fit to find it interesting how 
many German singers seemed capable of feeling 
for a contralto or a soprano part, indiscrimi- 
nately. 

“ It’s just their way of going at things, I 
guess,” explained Miss Furman. “ Where there’s 
a different opera every night and a handful of 
people to do them, it doesn’t really matter what 
you are, just so you can” 

“ Why ! ” exclaimed Aldrich, “ that sound posi- 
tively American.” 

“ Sure thing ! They go at art, here, much as 
we go at our finance over there.” 

On this observation Miss Furman arose and 
stood behind Fraulein Ackern’s chair, clasping her 
benefactress’s neck with a very taking impulsive- 
ness. “ The nicest thing about my going to 
Vienna, though, is that Schwesterlein’s coming 
14 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


over in October to spend a month with me, or 
maybe, all winter — aren’t you, little sister ? ” 

Fraulein Ackern looked, if anything, more 
gloomily out of eyes that seemed to pierce an 
empty future. “ There is the climate,” she said. 
“ I have fear before the Vienna climate. I have 
tried it one time. I am like the burnt child which 
has fear before the fire.” 

“ In the case of Vienna,” Miss Low remarked, 
“ I should call it rather the blown child dreading 
the wind.” The words came steeped in her high 
light laughter, her only mannerism, which yet 
failed to surprise, being somehow a part of her. 

Fraukin Ackern’s face remained a monotone 
of resignation over clasped hands in her lap. 

“ I am deciding,” she went on, “ I am deciding 
whether or not to keep open the villa and stay 
here for the rest of the winter after Victoria has 
gone.” 

“ When Victoria goes a-singing” trilled Miss 
Furman in a rich bubble of little minors. “ Never 
mind, honey, well keep you all tucked-in, in 
Vienna, and you’ll be that snug! ” 

“ So you’ve a regal name,” Aldrich observed. 

“ Maybe. I got it in Middle New York,” Miss 
Furman replied. “ I was named Victoria after 
an aunt — a sister of my mother’s.” 

Her voice fell, intentionally, and quite enough 
15 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


to convey that there was no mother now. Aldrich 
watched her for possible contrast between real and 
perfunctory pensiveness. 

She was away from the danger, if danger there 
were, before he could decide. “ For my part,” 
she declared, “I never liked Aunt Victoria, and 
so I never cared for the name — that is, not until 
I came abroad.” 

“ What altered it ? ” Aldrich made bold to 
ask. 

“ Oh, in the life on this side, it kept reminding 
me. It was like a kind of admonition on every 
letter — or rather on every bill. After a while, 
when funds began to run dry, there were no 
letters, you see, only bills! And so I forgot its 
associations.” 

“ And treasured its significance ? ” 

“ Just about that, only I’d have used a German 
word, probably, before I finished. About the time 
my English gave out I’d have said ‘ Bedeutung,’ 
or something of that sort. No matter ! ” 

“ ‘ Treasure the Bedeutung ’ ” — Aldrich tested 
the mixture for himself. “ Not so bad ! ” He 
could hear it as from the lips of thousands of good 
Americans who never mastered terms altogether 
handy for rough-and-ready abstraction in their 
own language, and never got nearer to any other 
language than its handy substantive. “ I mean 
16 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


rather,” he added, “ that it’s not so bad to have 
some Bedeutung to treasure.” 

“ A blessing and a burden,” Miss Furman 
elided hastily. “ But see! You’re idling, because 
Fve gone and forgotten to make you eat more 
strawberries.” 

“ I’m afraid we must ” — Miss Low made as if 
to begin, but Aldrich was already deep in pro- 
testation. 

“No more, thank you, for that would be too 
much of one thing while I starve for another. 
Why don’t you all talk more of this Vienna and 
this opera into which Miss Furman is going, and 
the roles she is to sing — the way she will do them 
— the costumes — everything. If I had that before 
me, it seems as if I should talk nothing else.” 

“We talk, and talk, and talk of it all day when 
we’re alone,” confessed Miss Furman, reaching 
for Fraulein Ackern’s hand. 

But Fraulein Ackern’s face had lighted up. 
“ Ach,” she exclaimed, “ it is not famos! There 
is yet no German opera better than Vienna. Be- 
fore one year, when not yet Miss Furman had 
come by me to live, she tried hard to get engage- 
ment in Leipzig — Leipzig, think only — Pfui! — 
that middle-people nest — and yet the Direktor 
there held back. When I found her and brought 
her here to me she was yet in despair because he 

*7 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


will not. If he had taken her she would be 
buried, because he would make a contract for five 
years. But even with that he will not until I say, 
‘ No — wait! ’ ” 

“ And he’d be holding back still,” supplemented 
Miss Furman. “ Had I not managed to get the 
guest-role in Vienna and to make good. His offer 
came just twenty-four hours after I’d signed the 
Vienna contract. Some way he’d got wind I was 
about to, you see, and came in on the home-stretch 
— just a day late! ” 

“ There seem to be many incorrigible nosers 
on the hindmost trail of success,” commented 
Aldrich. “ I wonder what makes them do 
it!” 

“ I’m afraid ” — Miss Low now made use of 
a more audible voice — “ I’m afraid, really, Archie, 
that we’re already very late for the Randolphs. I 
hate to tear him away,” she apologized, address- 
ing the others, “ but you know these Dresden 
trams.” 

“ And the Randolphs are the other side of town 
— why, sure ! ” cried Aldrich, springing up. 
“ How thoughtless of me.” 

“ You must let him come again,” said Miss 
Furman, “ if he’ll be a good boy.” 

There followed leave-takings, merry enough. 
They backed down the garden walk under fire of 
18 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


adieus and persiflage from Miss Furman twirling 
the lantern on the balcony. 

At the street corner outside, where they waited 
for a tram, they stood wordless, getting their 
breath. Miss Low peered anxiously up the street 
at the distant disc of the electric car. Aldrich 
proposed that they walk and let it catch up with 
them. 

“ As you like,” assented Miss Low, taking his 
arm. 

“ And now,” he hastened, well-nigh carrying 
her along with his keyed-up stride, “ tell me what 
you think of her ! ” 

Miss Low’s face was averted. “ Indeed,” she 
said, “ I can’t think of her at all. I’m kept busy 
feeling worried over poor Fraulein Ackern. I 
never before knew such an odd and pathetic case 
of obsession.” 

He teased her that her words had a tinge of 
the personal. “ And you are the one person in 
the world,” he added, “ of whom the personal is 
unimaginable.” 


Ill 


DOLLS, SAWDUST AND EMOTIONS; TOGETHER WITH 
WHAT THE BIRDS MAY ACCOMPLISH 

On the morrow, very early for him, Aldrich 
made his way down the cement stairs of the Villa 
Schramm. As always, he noted the unmention- 
ably be-odored dankness surcharged with mitigat- 
ing coffee and bakery; a whiff against morning 
yawns which hastened him around vaulted turns 
and shot him out the bottommost landing into one 
of the summerhouses. There was indeed an opu- 
lence of summerhouses here in this rhombus 
scrimpage of shrubs and gravel walks. The wid- 
owed sister-in-law Schramms had erected them 
in every corner, to say nothing of this extra one 
immediately facing the main entrance at the side 
of the Villa. “ We have no garden, I see,” Al- 
drich had remarked on the day of his arrival; “ it 
appears to have been crowded out by our garden 
bowers.” Which words, carried forthwith to the 
two proprietresses by one of the German fellow- 
boarders, had brought him into temporary eclipse. 


20 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


As Aldrich did not like unpopularity, even with 
Hausfrau or landlady, he was on the lookout to 
rectify himself. He had thought he saw a way 
through little attentions to the senior proprie- 
tress's eight-year-old Katychen, and was not dis- 
pleased this morning, to find Katychen and her 
doll ahead of him. 

Katychen arose and dropped him a courtesy. 
She radiated the diffuse spirit of her mother's 
establishment in lines of her tightly braided hair, 
sandy red; her legs, white-stockinged and pre- 
ternaturally thin; her features, anaemic, freckled, 
full of intelligence; her manner of correct and 
properly apportioned self-confidence. 

“ The Herr," she began, for she always ad- 
dressed Aldrich as der Herr — “the Herr has 
not yet had his coffee. I heard Mamma say so." 

“ Decidedly no, Katychen," said Aldrich in his 
most careful German. “ I never have an appetite, 
you see, until I come down and eavesdrop on the 
birds." 

Katychen, who had recently learned the story 
of Siegfried at school, asked him if he’d “ tasted 
dragon blood." He caught her freckled little 
hand between both his own. 

“ Katychen," he exclaimed, shaking his head at 
her, “ if you'd been a woman and said that, I 
should have called you a cat.” 


21 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Katychen was so amused that he wondered, 
after all, whether he had succeeded in getting be- 
yond her depth, as he had meant to do. Getting 
beyond Katychen’s depth was a neat enough prob- 
lem. Possibly she had merely been moved to or- 
dinary child’s mirth at the rapid juxtaposition of 
animals and monsters. He never quite decided, 
where Katychen was concerned. 

“ The vacation begins next week,” announced 
Katychen. 

“ That’s good,” he replied. “ In America they 
begin to get at vacation earlier — sometime along 
the beginning of June. But even that’s not 
enough. I think school ought not to happen at 
all, once it is June.” 

“ It is disagreeable,” replied Katychen. 

She had set her doll in the proper attitude fac- 
ing him, but she ignored its presence as some- 
thing casual and irrelevant. 

“ That seems to be a well-behaved doll,” he 
observed. 

“ Dolls are always well-behaved,” Katychen 
replied. 

“ That’s nice, isn’t it ? Perhaps they can’t even 
help behaving.” 

“ They’re dumb things,” mused Katychen, 
glancing at hers with tolerant boredom. 

“ Now, now, come to think of it, Katychen, 


22 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


you’re right. Somebody ought to invent a really 
naughty doll — a doll with feelings, you know ! ” 

“ Fraulein Low once took me to the ‘ Doll 
Fairy ’ ballet at the opera.” Katychen looked out 
at him, cornerwise, with her oldish dryness. “ I 
think there must have been lots of them in that.” 

“ Oh, yes, you find them in the ballet, Katy- 
chen; a little unwieldy, though, don’t you 
think?” 

“ Pfui ! ” agreed Kate. “ And they’re not 
really dolls after all.” 

“ As to that I’m not always so sure, partic- 
ularly those with the French names.” Aldrich 
felt reasonably certain he was beyond Katychen 
this time. “ But I tell you what, Katychen,” he 
hastened to add, “ I’ve seen real dolls emotional 
enough to squeal if you punched them in the 
ribs!” 

Katychen had owned one like that, a waxen 
blonde; but admitted she had thumped all the 
sawdust out of her, though long beforehand the 
blonde had grown so accustomed to the treatment 
she had ceased to complain. 

“ She had a spring-box inside of her. The 
English ladies are all blonde,” Katychen super- 
erogated. 

“ But they’ll never cease to complain, not while 
they’re out of England, at any rate; and there’s 

23 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


no thumping the sawdust out of them. Is there, 
Katychen ? ” 

“ What’s that ? ” came a highly inflected voice 
at his elbow. He turned, saluting Miss White- 
side. 

“ You dreadful man,” she exclaimed, gushing 
accusation. “ You dreadful man — to run down 
the English ! ” 

“ Well, I’m run down doing it, and that ought 
to atone,” said Aldrich. “ And then, you’re only 
English by adoption, you know. Don’t expect us 
to relinquish you offhand, just because you’ve 
been aristocratically living in Jersey.” 

At this juncture Katychen repeated for Miss 
Whiteside the courtesy she had made to Aldrich a 
few moments before, and withdrew as one dis- 
creetly sizing up candidates for a tete-a-tete. 

Miss Whiteside spread her lace handkerchief on 
the bench of the summerhouse and seated herself 
with circumspection for her starched ecru toilette, 

“ These dreadful German arbors,” she said. 
“ It never occurs to them to scrub them.” 

“ On the contrary, I think they scrub them too 
much. It makes the arbors as self-conscious as 
the gardens — and nearly as clean.” 

Miss Whiteside adjusted frills of elbow-sleeves 
and lines of skirt. “ Do you think the Germans 
really love nature ? ” she inquired. 

24 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ Undoubtedly. I could only wish they 

wouldn’t so picket it, and cook it up, and ” 

“ Oh, by the way,” interrupted Miss Whiteside, 
with a thinly veiled eagerness of one getting to 

her point, “ they tell me — they tell me ” 

In her artificial hesitation there was, some- 
where, a shrillness suggesting that America she 
had been so long at such pains to correct in her- 
self. Aldrich still stood where he had arisen at 
her entrance. He looked down upon the pow- 
dered attenuation of her uplifted nose. 

“ They tell you ” he assisted. 

“ You poor man,” she wriggled, “ what should 
they tell me but the real news that you’ve been 
caught — caught on the wing, as it were. In short, 
that you’ve met the prima-donna.” 

“ They’ve been prompt about it.” 

“ Oh, you know — the little bird ” 

“ Jove ! in this locality the birds do things.” 
He seated himself. “ But I’m interested to hear 
I’m caught, and I’m going to permit you to nar- 
rate it all to me with as much detail as may please 
you.” 

Miss Whiteside cried out in astonishment : 

“ Just fancy ! Why, I got up earlier than usual 
to let you tell me. Begin now. You must be full 
of her — everybody always is; and I’m dying to 
hear.” 


3 


25 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


He was watching her with his level look, which 
granted its twinkle as a usual concession to second 
thought. 

“ I’m still presupposing it is some opinion of 
Miss Victoria Furman you’re after.” 

Miss Whiteside subsided, in dainty fidgets. 

“ When Georgia got home last night I looked 
in on her. I’d known you were to call by for her, 
you see, so I asked all about it. Georgia hadn’t 
much to say — she never has, you know. But she 
thought Miss Furman had impressed you favor- 
ably — she always does, you know.” 

" You mean Georgia always thinks that Miss 
Furman always impresses me favorably?” 

Miss Whiteside pouted. 

“ Anyway you like — how exasperating you 
are ! ” 

“ That’s right,” Aldrich encouraged. “ Now 
we’re getting down to business. Begin. Have 
you heard Miss Furman sing?” 

“ Only in Fraulein Ackern’s drawing-rooms. 
You can’t tell in a place like that, you know.” 

“ You see, I’ve not heard her.” 

“ Oh, she has a glorious voice, I’ve no doubt. 
We’re all to understand it is so considered.” 

“ That sounds as if it ought to be all right,” 
mused Aldrich. 

“ But just fancy,” Miss Whiteside pursued: 

26 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ They say she can’t act at all. They say that 
when it comes to acting she’s a — a stick!” 

“ And we’re to understand that, too — without 
responsibility ? ” 

Pettishly Miss Whiteside shook her banged 
coiffure and accused him of making jest of her. 

“ Not for worlds,” he protested. “ Or at any 
rate, I’m just taunting you into telling me more 
of a lady who has plainly interested us both.” 

This time he neared the shadow of an earnest- 
ness which moved Miss Whiteside to break loose, 
and hand forth whatever she’d accumulated. 

“ It was all a pure stroke of luck — just fancy! ” 
she narrated. “ There’s a rumor that the Di- 
rector of the Vienna Opera was not even in the 
city when she sang her trial part — her Gast-rolle , 
as they call it.” 

“ Maybe,” Aldrich surmised. “ Maybe he’d 
been made to understand.” 

" It seems that was most probably it.” 

He had a twinge of conscience for so suggest- 
ing such deflection. 

“ Ah, yes,” Miss Whiteside went on, “ the 
Director was out of town, but that didn’t prevent 
the engagement. You know last winter in Dres- 
den, Miss Furman sang at a big charity concert 
given under the patronage of the King. She chose 
for her number a group of songs by an amateur 
27 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Viennese composer — one Graf von Liidersberg — 
a very great man there.” 

“ Perhaps they were good songs,” ventured 
Aldrich. 

Miss Whiteside’s glance did double duty of co- 
quetry and insinuation. 

“ A very powerful man,” she repeated. “ A 
society swell, and tenth cousin to Franz Josef — 
or something like that.” 

“ And even yet,” persisted Aldrich, “ they may 
have been good songs. I say,” he proposed, 
“ let’s go in and see what the rest of the Pension’s 
doing about breakfast.” 

Miss Whiteside shook her head as he arose. 
“ Such a boy ! ” she deplored, betraying her sense 
of maturity as she would have been careful not 
to do had the man in question seemed longer 
worth while. With starchy detachment, eloquent 
of her sense of his futility, she preceded him into 
the Villa. Aldrich knew this tete-a-tete to be a 
final installment on a capitalization quite experi- 
mental. If she had been sinking her funds, so to 
speak, it was plain she knew when to stop. His 
acquaintance with her, as a new friend of Geor- 
gia’s, dated back just about a half-week. He had 
been appraised punctually, though none too has- 
tily. And now he was ticketed and listed off. 
Here was piquant obviousness. He could have 
28 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


laughed aloud, the while he seemed to himself 
more or less of a mucker to see it so clearly. That 
was one of the penalties he was ever paying his 
writer’s consciousness; he must always be seeing 
things it was in poor taste for him to have an eye 
for. 


IV 


THE DEFINITION OF NOT PUTTING IT DEFINITELY 

At the Pension Schramm breakfast was served 
both Continental and American fashion. That is 
to say, most of the boarders preferred their cof- 
fee and Brotchen in their chambers, while Miss 
Low, Miss Whiteside, and Aldrich made use 
of the dining-room. This arrangement not only 
seemed less trouble for Anna, the much over- 
worked maid-of-all-work, but gave the three a 
morning meeting place for the laying out of daily 
plans. 

Miss Low was already in the dining-room at 
the window end of the long table. Behind her 
with increasing closeness crept the morning sun- 
light. It permeated her ash-blond hair and 
touched the outline of her cheek and bust with 
softening filtered stealth, sifted, as it was, through 
the cheese-cloth curtains. Coming upon her thus 
Aldrich was almost startled at the illusion of girl- 
ishness, enveloping, pervasive. It struck him that 
something in the arrangement of the Ackern bal- 
30 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


cony the evening before had done her gross in- 
justice. 

As for Miss Low’s breakfast, it was laid before 
her on the napkined width of a diminutive tray, 
from which widened the dreary expanse of table 
cover, red once, now a faded salmon. Over this 
pink waste her eyes were wandering musingly be- 
tween coffee sips so ultra slow that, as Aldrich 
had remarked on a previous occasion, she seemed 
experimenting with some strange species of drug. 

Miss Whiteside rushed upon her. 

“ Georgia ! ” she burst forth. “ It just this in- 
stant occurs to me! Isn’t this the day of the 
Lubke’s musicale ? ” 

Miss Low’s musing had ceased in quick bright- 
ness. “ I’d quite forgotten,’’ she said. “ You’ve 
both breakfasted, of course ? ” 

“ If we haven’t, we mean to,” said Aldrich. 
“ But what’s this about a musicale in midsum- 
mer ? ” 

Miss Whiteside explained that the Baronin 
Lubke, who had prepared Miss Furman for opera, 
was to give a final musicale before taking some 
well-earned rest at her summer home in the Harz. 
The Baronin had remained in town unusually late 
this year. 

“ Fraulein Ackern said something some time 
ago about our all going, didn’t she, dear ? ” 

31 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Miss Whiteside made a point of letting no rea- 
sonable diversion escape. 

“ She spoke of being willing to arrange it/’ 
smiled Miss Low, “ but she must have forgotten. 
At all events, she hasn’t mentioned it since.” 

“ I call that really quite nasty of her ! ” 

Miss Whiteside had moved one of the chairs 
nearer Miss Low’s, and tapped the bell for Anna. 
She gave her orders for coffee that should be par- 
ticularly hot, Brotchen extra toasted, and an egg 
boiled three minutes and fifteen seconds. 

Aldrich wanted further information concerning 
the musicale. Miss Low shoved a morning paper 
toward him, from which, after some search, he 
found a notice and read aloud that Miss Furman 
was to sing songs by Beethoven, and Schubert, 
and Franz. 

“ A little classical and old-fashioned, per- 
haps?” He laid down the paper to remove the 
apex from the egg Anna had brought him. 

“ She does that kind of thing best.” There was 
in Miss Low’s tone the inflection of critical au- 
thority, however subdued. With its riper note it 
dissipated the girlishness wrought of window 
drapery and morning light. Aldrich was amused 
to find himself feeling more at home. 

“ It has almost seemed to me,” Miss Low pur- 
sued, “ that Miss Furman would have done well 


32 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


to have adhered to her original plan. She started 
out to become a concert singer. The idea of opera 
seems to have been more or less forced upon her 
by the Baroness Lubke. ,, 

“ You mean,” Aldrich inquired, “ that she lacks 
the dramatic consciousness ? ” 

Miss Low hesitated. “ I’m not sure I’d put it 
just that way.” 

“ Why, of course you wouldn’t, Georgia! ” He 
threw back his head and laughed. “ Never, never, 
would you put it just that way, because that’s one 
of my man’s awkward dives. What I’m really 
after, and patiently waiting for, is your woman’s 
finer distinction.” 

“ Well ” Miss Low selected her words with 

obvious care. “ Granting, to begin with, that I’m 
no ultimate judge, then I should say — she lacks 
not dramatic consciousness so much as — as imag- 
ination — or something even harder to define. If 
you wanted to be very pedantic and German, you 
might call it ‘ aesthetic over-soul.’ ” 

Miss Whiteside cried out a “ Fancy it,” and 
a “ Dear me,” snapping comprehending lashes 
over beady pupils. 

“ But you don’t like her, do you, dear ? ” she 
added. 

“ Georgia wouldn’t put it in just that way,” 
Aldrich replied for her. 


33 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ I’m afraid,” softly retorted she whom they 
called “ Georgia,” “ I’m afraid we’re giving Miss 
Furman an undue rush.” 

It was not a too obvious hint, yet the breakfast 
talk veered elsewhere forthwith, which Miss 
Whiteside regretted. She was beginning to have 
her onlooker’s exhilaration of crucial quoits in the 
pitching. Her morning’s chat with Aldrich had 
in some way been of such a nature as to quite 
complete a steady disillusionment regarding his 
availability. It had brought her to an attitude 
free from personal hopes touching him broadly 
and inevitably as convenient masculinity. The 
more, then, was he now become of importance 
as a motive and cue for Georgia. Miss White- 
side’s outpost was the better and her observa- 
tion the keener through wholesome deperson- 
alization. Her curiosity was, moreover, the more 
active. 

Long ago she had decided that in some strange 
and silent and unexpected way Georgia must 
be very much in love with this young fel- 
low Aldrich. What Georgia saw in him she, 
Miss Whiteside, failed to comprehend. On one 
or two occasions she had even tried, though 
with indifferent success, to hint as much to Geor- 
gia herself, with some purpose of drawing her 
out. To begin with, he was not old enough; and 

34 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


in some ways his speech and conduct were, if any- 
thing, more immature than his appearance. Then 
there seemed something intangible, if not un- 
steady, about a man who lived frankly for nothing 
better than to produce prose, or (the horror of 
it!) even verse, in his own way and at his own 
time. The extenuation of it all was that he ap- 
peared to have an income sufficient to enable him 
to do so. Indeed, it was largely this fact, coupled 
with some unescapable glamour from Georgia’s 
mute estimate, that had made him seem worth the 
usual preliminary testing bout. In this, as has 
been seen, he had failed. In Miss Whiteside’s 
encounters of coquetry only the man could fail. 
Irresponsiveness from one of the opposite sex 
was the plain but comfortable proof of his 
limitation. 

This morning with even the small-talk of break- 
fast, almost, though unintentionally, excluding 
her, Miss Whiteside had a particular mood of 
mental thankfulness for the men over forty — the 
real men — in whom intelligent response and ap- 
preciation were better matured. At present the 
outlook was a little destitute. Yet, following the 
merciful provision that things are never so bad 
but they may be worse, the Pension Schramm 
included a certain Herr Adolf, whose fifty un- 
hampered years placed him well in the category. 

35 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Unfortunately, Herr Adolf’s business duties kept 
him away much of the time. Those same duties 
had at some time or other in his life given him a 
protracted residence in London, with a result of 
certain anglicisms entirely to his advantage in 
Miss Whiteside’s eyes. In the course of the pres- 
sent conversation she found occasion, at last, to 
revert to his absence of the past few weeks, pen- 
sively, as befitted. 

“ If Herr Adolf were only here! ’’ she put it. 

“ Pluralizing? ” Aldrich left it with Georgia. 

“ He is the most British German I ever met, 
just as you, Cecilia, are the most English Amer- 
ican.” Miss Low smiled. 

“ The very idea,” fluttered Miss Whiteside. 
“ But really, Georgia, I leave it to you. Isn’t he 
the most ideal man? And such a real swell! I 
never before believed a German could be a real 
swell.” 

“ He never can until he gets to be English,” 
observed Aldrich. 

Miss Whiteside huddled together on her pout 
again. She exclaimed that Aldrich was perfectly 
horrid; and made as if to extinguish her faint be- 
powdered blush. Her affectations were of the sort 
which has little efficacy. Aldrich, for instance, 
felt a gradual meanness in not more making her 
feel (little spinster that she was) the appeal of 
36 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


all she wished to appear. After all, with what 
pathetic dependence did she hang upon Miss Low, 
literally following her, channels-over, from coun- 
try to country. Now that he had joined them, 
for a time, did he not more or less share the un- 
formulated duty exacted forever of her type ? 
For that type, pitiful perhaps, dawdling very 
possibly, and most certainly detached, even in its 
attachments — cast upon the reef of its uselessness 
like seaweed — must qualify whatever it touched 
with this exaction, nameless though it might be. 
And forever! Humanity was surely arranged 
very much for the convenience of its more incon- 
venient atoms. Here Aldrich must end it with 
resignation, resolving at the same time to be from 
henceforth as nice as to her as it would be quite 
nice to be. 

There had been this morning the usual attempt 
at formulating some combined plan for the day. 
Miss Whiteside was eager Georgia should accom- 
pany her into the city. Perhaps even Aldrich 
might want to go, too ? But Miss Low had made 
the long trolley journey and back the night before, 
and the day promised heat, besides. Aldrich 
gravely explained how delighted he would be were 
there not a pile of galley-proof awaiting him — 
his last translation — direct from the printer in 
America. 


3 7 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ You’re both of you horrid — so there! ” Miss 
Whiteside flung at them, flouncing from the room. 
In a moment, however, she was back again, hatted 
and parasoled, with a repentant kiss for Georgia. 

“ I did so want you to look at that challie with 
me,” she apologized. “ Just fancy ! Every pos- 
sible shade at twenty-five pfennigs a yard.” 

“ Get lavender,” counseled Georgia, “ that will 
be safe. Good-by, dear. Don’t get overheated.” 
She let herself be kissed a second time, draw- 
ing freedom in a deep breath when all was quiet 
again. 

“ Something must be done with her,” observed 
Aldrich, “ or some day she’ll turn on us.” 

Miss Low sighed, and assured him that “ Ce- 
cilia ” was all right. 

“ Generally speaking, where did you pick Ce- 
cilia up? ” 

“ In England, I think.” 

“ You’re uncertain. I see. She evolved upon 
you gradually.” 

“ She is very much alone after all,” ventured 
Georgia. “ I think — it seems to me — that in such 
cases one can always do something.” 

“ One can marry her off, or try to, if that’s 
what you mean. And, counting on her own re- 
luctant assistance ” 

“ By the way,” Miss Low broke in, “ I peeped 

38 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


between the blinds this morning before breakfast 
and found Cecilia and you in the most delicious 
confab. I was concerned ! ” 

“ You may well have been,” he admitted 
gravely. “ Not that I had any plan of helping 
Cecilia out with a first option.” 

“ I was going to say ! ” 

Her accustomed laugh rang a protest. 

“You may well have been concerned for all 
that,” he explained; “as my Good Saint and 
Patroness you ought to be. You see, we were dis- 
cussing Miss Furman — Victoria Furman — Royal 
Opera singer of Vienna — that shall be here- 
after!” 

As he spoke he was adjusting the window shade 
behind her to the increasing sun-glare. And 
so he felt from her only the fixedly gentle humor 
which his mind’s eye habitually saw when his ac- 
customed habit of mind failed in seeing anything. 

A few seconds later she persisted in declining 
his offer of a stroll in the Waldpark. He ought 
to be back about his work, she insisted. He had 
been detained from his work too long already. 


V 


THE BIOGRAPHY OF AN ATTACHMENT — A PRAC- 
TICE CADENZA 

Between Aldrich and Miss Low the friendship 
dated back enough to impel a certain recognition 
which motored privileges. It held its ground. 
There is a firmness about things habitual enough 
to become elastic. Just how much she was his 
senior he, for his part, never cared to know; and 
if, in her, the essential feminine ever stopped to 
think it out, she must have felt the good taste of 
his assumption toward it. His guise was paradox 
indeed; breezy familiarity which yet attested con- 
sideration: the subtler deference a younger man 
may render an older woman. 

So may a man's friendship actually be of that 
quality which insulates a woman from herself. 
It is open to question, however, whether a man 
may ever quite guard a woman from some holy- 
of-holies concerning him; some insistence of her 
femininity perhaps; subconscious; not infre- 
quently irrelevant. Miss Low, at least, kept some 
of her smiles for her closet. There, in secret, they 
40 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


derided, or tried to deride, certain sentiments of 
memory touching the boyhood of the man whose 
boyhood might be said to more than live up 
to him without quite living him down. It was 
the boyhood panting for breath behind the man 
that kept repleting in her some quenchless ten- 
derness over the boy that had been. 

Thus was the inevitable enshrinement : one 
lad Archibald (popularly Archie) who stood well 
nimbused in a first glimpse of him out of van- 
ished years. There was a one first morning of 
early summer, when she had looked from her bal- 
cony window and seen him gather self-conscious 
shoulders together and fish in an inside pocket for 
a visiting card, as he made his way up the walk 
to her door. The visiting card held his three 
names : Archibald Churchill Aldrich. It was now 
quite yellow, fastened in the frame behind a photo 
of Archie at seventeen, which never left Miss 
Low’s dresser. 

On the first summer morning in question, Miss 
Low had been one week back at the old New 
Hampshire homestead. Her sojourn in Europe 
had been long : long enough indeed to detach her 
and give her that sense of putting her American- 
ism out to air, which seemed to exact mute apolo- 
gies of her loyalty. She was uncertain whether or 
not it pleased her to find her patriotism being 
4i 


4 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


freshened, more or less automatically, in the num- 
berless old acquaintances who hastened to call and 
reclaim it. They did so practically without her 
intervention. On every side the half-forgotten 
friends seemed to spring up, to boost her into 
quickened assurances — replenished love for things 
American, which they had no reason to doubt she 
must feel in the added ardor of absence. 

Thus, any doubt on her own part of what she 
must feel became a much assisted certainty of the 
impropriety of not feeling it. 

Yet among the promptest callers Archie's 
mother had, with a nameless charm of assump- 
tion, really redeemed many New England pre- 
possessions. Mrs. Churchill-Aldrich, as she was 
generally chronicled locally (whereby she was 
distinguished from a Mrs. Alden-Aldrich and a 
Mrs. Eb-Aldrich, both of them first cousins by 
marriage, and living in the same community), ap- 
peared to be a lady of stately garrulity, tactful 
withal, and beautiful with that beauty which 
whitened hair makes vivid for the lay observer. 

Much of her chat with Miss Low must perforce 
touch upon her children, in whose life her own life 
had so largely been absorbed. She had referred 
particularly to the little son of yore — the young- 
est. Did Miss Low perhaps remember having 
once remarked his thick, wavy hair? Miss Low 
42 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


did recall the hair, and the straight, cool eyes as 
well. She had seen him on one of her girlhood 
vacations from Wellesley, had she not? — a little 
boy who had been called in from play to present a 
sweaty palm? The mother related how he was 
now a big little boy, entering college next fall, 
Moreover, he had developed literary predilections 
and an odd interest for continental poets and 
dramatists, evoked, no doubt, of dippings in cer- 
tain little-used sets in their library. A reasonably 
normal boy for all that, though : and he had ex- 
pressed a desire to resume his acquaintance with 
Miss Low, who had lived so much abroad. The 
fact was, some of his tastes met small response 
or nourishment in his home life. (Mrs. Aldrich 
expressed a dignified twinge of motherly con- 
science.) But what was she to do? A New 
England matron, however her activities and anx- 
ieties might center in her family as a family, was 
confronted by a grave problem touching this same 
family as a series of highly specialized units. Her 
motherhood must be mute just where the individ- 
ualism began to show strongest. If one could but 
sometimes travel! Not for years at a time as 
Miss Low did — imagination failed to go that far 
— but a little, sometimes, if only to meet, in some 
way, exactions in the various growings-up of 
one’s own children. But it was out of the ques- 

43 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


tion. There was always the too proscribed round 
binding her to this New Hampshire village, not 
counting the string, sometimes allowed for a 
few hundred miles beyond it. In America a few 
hundred miles or so didn’t take you far. Miss 
Low must really meet her boy. To know Miss 
Low would, she believed, be the boon he just now 
most needed. 

With her graded silvery laugh, even then a 
fixed habit, Miss Low had agreed to take 
“ Archie ” in hand, urging the mother to “ send 
him over ” as soon as he might be induced to 
come. She would tell him what she could. Pos- 
sibly if the lad had found interest in Carlylian 
bits of Klopstock, or Lessing, Grillparzer, or Jean 
Paul, he might like to come down to something 
nearer, with her, and hear of her months among 
these new Munich Secessionists. It almost looked 
sometimes as if these Secessionists might turn not 
only painting, but music, literature, the theater, 
even house decoration and furniture building, all 
upside down — almost as if they had set out merely 
to topple pyramids on their apexes. And yet they 
went about it all with such energy and vitality; 
often (not always, alas!) such technical virtuos- 
ity! You couldn’t quite make them out as the 
Decadents their enemies called them — not after 
you were used to them, at any rate! Yes: she 

44 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


had met several of their German celebrities, 
though celebrities were not much in the line of 
Americans in Germany. In Berlin, to be sure, 
you would some time or other run bolt against 
one, if you went out at all. Often you were 
ashamed of yourself for never having heard of 
him until his personal presentation. Then you 
had to ascertain some way or other just how cel- 
ebrated he was, afterward. 

It had turned out a long visitation, in which 
both Miss Low and Mrs. Churchill-Aldrich in- 
creasingly indulged themselves in being charmed 
with each other. Mrs. Aldrich was quickly at her 
ease as to discretion and taste in her enthusiasm 
for a cultured and traveled woman: Miss Low, 
on the other hand, realized in her caller some em- 
bodied conception of New England motherhood 
at its best, and in high relief against a flattening 
retrospect of European bizarreries. 

When the son put in his appearance two morn- 
ings later, it was the look of the mother which 
Miss Low sought, in her first glance across his 
level eyes. Finding it there, she sealed a mental 
acceptance, which glowed forth in cordiality, put- 
ting him, hypnotically, at boyish ease. The day 
following, he had tea with her, German fashion, 
in her garden, and she told him of a young poet 
she had met in Munich — one who told his poetry 

45 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


not in words, but in orchestral instruments, and 
who was said to be finding out things left undis- 
covered by the great Wagner himself : one Rich- 
ard Strauss. This poet, she explained, was a 
musical Secessionist. There were all sorts of 
Secessionists nowadays. Their primal mark was 
the recognition of some fundamental law of their 
own impulse as supreme and independent of all 
that might go before it. Their only requirement 
apparently was that the impulse be productive. 
Nothing must go lost. If you felt anything good 
or bad, or great or small, you must get it into 
language or into stone, or encrust it with a palette 
knife over canvas, or devise it out in sounds. 
Sometimes you tried all of these ways, if you were 
very rabid. There was, she had heard, such a 
man in Leipzig, who had painted Christ on 
Olympus, made a Salome in tinted marbles, and 
turned the Brahm’s symphonies into etchings. 

In the end Miss Low found herself trying to 
make a joke of her Secessionists, so palpably, so 
well-nigh dangerously were they interesting her 
young friend. As she might have foreseen, he 
was particularly carried away by the idea of a 
fundamental artistic law in untrammeled indi- 
vidual impulse. With misgivings, Miss Low, who 
had meant to make her allusions conversational 
and superficial, saw them striking home. Over 
46 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


his forgotten teacup flaked round with restlessly 
be-crumbed Stolle (now a very dry cake indeed, 
brought by Miss Low from Dresden in her trunk) 
he waxed confident, self-forgetful, loquacious. 
He was going to Harvard in the fall, he told her. 
His people were set upon it, of course. He, for 
his part, was by no means certain Harvard was 
what he was after. More to his liking would be 
one of those great European universities, where, 
he’d understood, everything was elective: where 
there was always an old-world library, somewhere 
around, and you could go just as deeply as you 
liked into anything. There, too, you were at 
fountain sources of things, and there was (no 
doubt) in all the atmosphere this wonderful 
Secessionism, of which Miss Low had recounted. 
He would come to-morrow and show Miss Low 
some of the things he’d written — she’d under- 
stand what he was trying to do better than his 
High School English teacher, who gave him un- 
sympathetic blue-pencil comment, and often the 
poorest grading on the things he’d done most 
truly out of himself. The trouble with his High 
School English teacher was, she really didn’t 
want you to do things right out of yourself, even 
though she did sometimes prate individuality. 
She wanted them done out of things done al- 
ready. She would grant the little necessary fall- 

47 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


in g behind on the pace, and inferiority in your 
imitation, if only you would imitate! He was 
just a little afraid it would be that way with the 
things they’d want you to do at Harvard. 

“ And everywhere else, my boy,” Miss Low 
had laughingly discouraged. “ Believe me, at 
college in Munich, Bavaria, or in Cambridge, 
Massachusetts, you’ll have to learn not to be indi- 
vidual — so as to really know how to be, you 
know.” 

The comment was not without a significance 
to be afterward remembered. It fell, for the 
nonce, limply beyond the range of level eyes look- 
ing out at immediate issues. Miss Low had put 
him under that sort of spell in which what she 
said to him was vague indeed compared with what 
he had to say to Miss Low. Exhilaration spoke 
its last word in the fullness of opportunity. The 
boy had taken his leave well on toward sundown. 
He had remembered that he must take it, sud- 
denly, with stammers of apologies, instantly for- 
gotten in plans for the succeeding fall. Would 
she not like walking to the sulphur spring over 
in the field, sometime? They could go an hour 
before supper and take along their drinking cups. 

“ I want to show you then — that is, if you don’t 
mind — some of my poetry,” he proposed. There 
was the hesitation of a flush, and a pleased twitch- 
48 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


in g of lips testifying ominousness. “ When 
you’ve seen that,” he went on, squaring himself 
against the tea table — “ and you’re the first per- 
son Eve wanted to show it to — honestly — I be- 
lieve you’ll say — well — I think, from what you 
tell me — I must be a Secessionist.” 

His flush had steadied into further oblivions of 
confidence. “ I’ve often wished I might go 
abroad right away,” he continued, still standing 
hat in hand. “ It might be the worst thing for 
some fellows — fellows who don’t know what they 
want, and so have to have it all ready mapped 
out for them. But it would be all right for me 
because I know just what I want.” 

“ You know a great deal,” laughed Miss Low, 
“ if you’re sure you know that.” 

This trite comment had been unfortunate in 
bringing further hesitance, more fumbling of hat, 
and a deeper redness. She saw the quick imma- 
ture apprehension in him of the egotism he’d been 
showing, and from a viewpoint less sympathetic 
than she meant hers should be. Quickly she had 
relented. 

“ Now, don’t forget our walk,” she reminded 
him. “ And bring the poems — remember you’ve 
promised to bring the poems.” 

The readjustment had been immediate. 

“ I’ll bring them,” he said, “ only I’d better not 

49 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


read them at the sulphur springs. They might 
ignite it” 

With Miss Low’s mock exclamation of horror 
as further exhilaration, he managed finally to get 
himself off. It was no such serious matter. But 
cleaving his immaturities — call them crudities — 
if you would — Miss Low had already projected 
out of him the man of the future. Here was a 
process in which there was nothing to deter her 
from following her own pattern. In the satisfac- 
tion of it she frankly envied his mother, and rec- 
ognized, without qualm, the ear-marks of her own 
approaching spinsterhood. 

Accustomed discipline ! Spinsterhood had 
now, for some time, faced her, a family Nemesis. 
Throughout her life, more or less, it had been 
corporeally vivid. Following the death of a 
mother in her infancy, the death of a father in 
his only daughter’s fifth year had left her to the 
complete charge of his two unmarried sisters. 
These ladies had fulfilled their mission to the 
letter, keeping the old homestead for her inviolate 
in its traditions. Her rearing had had further 
advantage of some constant symbol in their abne- 
gations for each other, since between the two had 
existed that insulating devotion which seems so 
to thrive in parallel phases of feminine isolation. 
If they shared unconscious exclusions which made 
50 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


her early girlhood indefinably a hungry one, and 
subsequent vacations from Wellesley something 
in the nature of gentle horrors, she had yet been 
moved to the heart of her, when one had died, 
and the other had followed within a few months 
from palpable sheer inanition of further will to 
live. 

The first death had brought her home from a 
graduating trip to Europe, made with a party of 
college companions. If at this time one thing 
could have served to emphasize more than an- 
other her past and present solitude, it had been 
her proven powerlessness of comfort. She had 
almost feared it would have been better had she 
remained abroad. Would it not have been even 
more merciful? For then the placid Aunt Lydia, 
survivor of the more voluble Aunt Louisa, might 
have faded away, peaceably, altogether undis- 
turbed, amid the speechless silences which beck- 
oned her on, so ungainsayingly. Poor Aunt 
Lydia ! She but looked toward the stillness. Un- 
demonstratively, though in decent gratitude, she 
had accepted her niece’s ministrations to the final 
closing of tired eyelids. 

Thus had been made fair demand for the 
niece’s long expatriation. The Elsewhere had 
beckoned : a thing broad, kindly, and diverse. To 
return to it was but to retreat to sanctuary. 

5i 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Afterward she had calculated the ordeal, when 
the cycle of years should by their gravitation 
bring her home again. At best, the resumption 
of old contacts is a thing uncertain. When it 
finally came upon her, dreading the experiment, 
recognizing the odd law of nativity which en- 
forced it, she was to find it mercifully softened 
away from the guises of her expectation. 

In the case of Archie’s mother, for instance, 
there was a stimulation of new friendship which 
yet had somewhat of the sanction of memory. 
Archie and Archie’s aims were the leavener. The 
interest was timely enough to more or less usurp 
the past with the present. The situation must 
inevitably give a foreground to the boy which he 
could not have held had he been the man. If, 
being the boy he happened to be, he held it rather 
better than if he had been different, there was yet 
nothing non-typical about it. No maturity has 
ever managed to gainsay the potence of youth, 
which is axiomatic, self-explanatory, where ma- 
turity must constantly justify itself. 

In some wise, however, Archie might date his 
maturity (such as it was) from Miss Low’s en- 
thusiasm in his youth. Her very household ar- 
rangement was an exaction. In it was the per- 
meation of an old world turned new, strong in 
suggestion through a new world grown old. He 
52 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


could, at the very outset, get from it the inkle 
of handicap in his way of looking at things. At 
his “ Prep ” school he was studying both Ger- 
man and French. In Miss Low's home there 
lay, freely scattered, German periodicals and 
French reviews, which she could take up and 
read as casually as she would an American news- 
paper, and which he could not read at all, there 
being no vocabulary at the back. He caught the 
reproach of this sort of thing. In it he had his 
foreseeings, and shook from himself the vestige 
of a too easy standard, too often ready for per- 
manence. 

How much Miss Low, a gracious uninsistent 
presence, was smoothing out his energies at this 
period, he could not, in the nature of the case, 
realize. His college course was to better bring 
it out later. He was to yearn away from the 
contrast of its typical enforced gluttony of facts. 
He was to jest with Miss Low, by letter, that she 
was showing up (like a negative under chemical) 
a ferocious, if passive, iconoclast! And he was 
to realize at length, or believe he realized, how 
somewhere in her ideal, the principle of the actual 
had crept in a big earnestness, dominating the 
unreal with an intolerance ripe enough for that 
influence of which he had been too little aware. 
Perhaps she, too, had been too little aware ! At 

53 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


all events, she had been least conscious where her 
influence had been strongest. 

She, for her part, was destined to hold to this 
summer preceding his college as a thing of walks 
afield and interminable lyrics! Archie had pro- 
jected his aims in floods of confession from 
day to day. Half-baked though they might 
be, and without perspective, their deeper thrill 
was something to be pitted, without loss, against 
cool measures of subsequent attainment. Their 
significance had but grown across the years which 
had seen them, in so many instances, so deflected 
or destroyed. 

From her point of view, which could not help 
being comparative, her influence was negligible 
ever afterward. The friendship was to merge 
by degrees into an impalpability intact but nebu- 
lous in occasional holiday reunions, and a spas- 
modic correspondence. The year following his 
B. A. from Harvard his father died. The estate 
had been much increased by certain tardy strokes 
of prosperity. Its division between Mrs. Church- 
ill-Aldrich and her three children — the two mar- 
ried daughters and the son — had left Archie 
ready-made enough to spare him the pain of get- 
ting himself self-made. There was now no rea- 
son why he should not become the writer he had 
planned to become. 


54 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Long ere this, however. Miss Low had been 
reconfirmed in what she herself dubbed the “ flit- 
ting habit.” If she could not quite account for 
it, she had yet no urgent ground for acquiring any 
other. Her wanderings were never so far nor so 
wide but that they brought her sometimes back to 
the friends they made for her. Archie’s first book 
was an instance. With Archie’s printed dedica- 
tion, and Archie’s written inscription, it had 
tracked her some several thousand miles. Her 
letter, sent in return, was as heartfelt as she had 
ever written, expressive of her pride and grati- 
tude. Time was, in a manner, making him tangi- 
ble. As for the magic of it, was there after all, 
she asked herself, any magic save in that which 
time has hallowed ? 

The gate of the Schramm Pension creaked on 
rusty hinges behind Miss Low. She heard a tap- 
ping on the ledge of the window above her. 
Archie had looked up from his work as she passed 
out. His balcony was wide open, the curtain 
pushed back. She could see the pile of galley- 
proofs on the table beside him. He was waving 
to her and smiling, but the absent look of work 
did not leave his eyes. She nodded back, before 
hoisting the parasol which shut him from sight, 
as she went her way. 


55 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Her way led this morning to Fraulein Ackern’s 
Villa. As she approached her destination, her 
steps, never hasty, lagged slow almost to motion- 
lessness. She had had the good impulse to go for 
Cecilia and remind Fraulein Ackern of her for- 
gotten promise regarding the Lubke Musicale. 
She knew it to be a case of oversight, and that she 
might do so without presumption. More than 
this : she had for years been regarded by Fraulein 
Ackern in the light of an intimate, if intermittent, 
friend — perhaps the most intimate among that 
German lady’s favorite Americans — until the ad- 
vent of the Furman, at least. 

Diversions like this musicale meant so much to 
poor Cecilia. Archie might take her, and have 
himself the opportunity she knew he coveted of 
hearing Miss Furman sing. 

As she turned the corner nearest the Ackern 
Villa, a round sweep of cadenza, liquid and per- 
vasive, seemed to strike full against the morning, 
across the shrubbery. It died in a sort of echo 
of itself manipulated in half voice. In it was a 
vitality like triple youth, to bear out against obsta- 
cles, or seasons, or solitudes, defying them, when 
it could not laugh them down. Again the sounds 
coiled out mellifluously, challengingly. She rec- 
ognized Miss Furman at her morning practice. 


VI 


A VOCAL LESSON THE SKY VERSUS A GARDEN 

ROSE 

The early afternoon of the same day found 
Victoria Furman punctually keeping her appoint- 
ment at Webenholz, a tiny estate capping the 
hills across the river — the home of the Frau Ba- 
ronin Lubke. She had been directed to arrive in 
time for extra coaching, a half-hour before the 
hypothetical earliest guest. The Lubke paced up 
and down the music room in a fume of impa- 
tience. 

“ Dear Herr God ! ” she broke forth as Miss 
Furman entered. “ See the time ! I have a tele- 
gram from the Graf von Ludersberg, and he will 
come in twenty minutes — unbelievable ! He 
would like to hear you sing your Fides Aria, 
extra. Ach God, thou Dear One! If I had 
known I would have had you here all morning.” 

“ How snide of him ! ” Miss Furman removed 
her Eton jacket. From some corner of the room 
crept forth the accompanist, who had been effac- 

5 57 


th£ emotionalist 


ing himself with that rare success attainable by 
his kind. 

The Lubke understood English, but was prone 
to irritation when it involved a slang expression 
beyond her. 

“ What is ‘ snide ’ ? ” she demanded. 

“Never mind; I won’t say it again.” Miss 
Furman undid her music roll. 

“ None of those songs. Ah, God ! ” A leather- 
bound “ Prophet ” score was slammed on the 
piano rack. “ Find the aria.” The Baronin ad- 
dressed the accompanist. 

“ The Frau Baronin will forgive me,” he 
stammered, “ there is more than one aria in 
‘ Prophet ’ ! ” 

“ Salad-head ! ” announced the Lubke. “ And 
what aria does the Furman sing always? So 
something stupid ! ” 

“ Now, now,” pacified Miss Furman. “ Willie 
couldn’t know — I sometimes sing the first: Act 
One also. Third act, Williechen ! ” 

The Frau Baronin had tethered her nerves in 
the wake of surmounting forces and did justice 
to both by recourse to either. Having cleared the 
air by a general and massive petulance, she pro- 
ceeded with the rehearsal and arose to her own 
height. 

“Yes,” she sighed at the first lull, when both 

58 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


women paused for breath, “you do it all right 
when I am there. When I am not there I know 
how something goes out of it. You sing me — 
but you cannot sing yourself. There will be those 
who will call you an artist. But I sometimes 
believe you will never be an artist except — by 
proxy, as you say in English.” 

On this question the Furman was without van- 
ity. She bowed her head. 

“ Yet I want to do it with my whole soul,” she 
said. “ What’s the matter ? ” 

“ You belong to the wrong race. You are too 
much Amerikanerin. The Americans have all of 
them the common-sense ; and nothing is quite so 
stupid as common-sense.” 

The little accompanist, though quite forgotten, 
had wheeled on his seat. 

“ Ach, Fraulein,” he broke loose, “ it is not so 
bad.” 

“ Thank you, Williechen — but you’d better 
keep still about it, or you may some day lose your 
job! ” 

Here the Lubke was halted. Her rare smile 
broke forth from sunken eyes of a fire still con- 
siderable. 

“ You see,” she observed, “ he is of our race. 
He could have sung — if he’d been granted aught 
but chicken-lungs ! ” 


59 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ Of course. That’s why Williechen plays so 
well.” Miss Furman patted Williechen’s shoul- 
der, and glanced at the clock. “ The Graf is nice 
and late, I see. If you’ll only hear me I should 
like to go over the Beethoven, too — just once, be- 
fore he gets here.” 

Half audibly the Lubke reflected something to 
the effect that the genuine Amerikaner was given 
to a conscientiousness quite disproportionate to 
his conscience. She added specific preliminaries 
regarding the pose of the tongue on certain vowels 
and bade the Fraulein proceed. The song was a 
four-verse ballad, and its final phrase was caught 
up on a handclapping outside the door. 

“ Bravo !” 

There entered the Graf von Liidersberg, with 
the dapper air of his appropriated right to do so. 

“ I have heard many verses outside.” He bent 
to his hand-kissing, lingering over the Furman’s 
ringless fingers. Victoria winked at her teacher 
across his scant locks. 

The Frau Baronin scowled. “ Fraulein Fur- 
man shows progress, nicht wahr ? ” 

“ It was always good,” assured the Graf. “ It 
was always so good it could not be better. But 
now it is better than ever — that — sdchlich ! ” 

“ Impossibly better — I see.” Miss Furman 
conceded his prestige a sly pinch of the finger-tips 
60 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


as he at length let go her hand. There being no 
betrayal in his manner, the Graf’s prestige ap- 
peared equal to it. 

“ Fraulein sings like an angel,” he announced. 

“ But she doesn’t feel like one,” objected the 
Fraulein in question. 

The Lubke grasped her opportunity. 

“ Jawohl! That is what fails. One must feel 
like an angel when one sings.” 

“If the angel is in the song,” broke in the Graf. 
“ Do not forget that, Fraulein ! if it is in the song. 
And sometimes it is not/' 

Victoria had backed against the bass end of 
the keyboard. She began drumming it thought- 
fully with her hands behind her. 

“ The Herr Graf fears,” she observed, “ that 
I may try and feel like an angel by being one.” 

“ It will not be her method,” the Lubke re- 
joined. 

“ I have not feared — nein,” thoughtfully pro- 
tested the Graf. 

“ And wouldn’t it be a bad method, after all ? ” 
continued the Furman. “ Once you are a thing, 
you immediately stop feeling you are ! ” 

“ Fraulein is quite wrong,” corrected the 
Lubke. “ A woman can never be anything so 
much that she does not even more feel it.” 

“ Perhaps, after all, you’re right,” speculated 
61 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


the Furman. “ That’s why we’re forced to skirts, 
I suppose. They’re a sort of emblem of our self- 
consciousness.” 

“ Entziickend ! ” The Graf caught at her hand, 
but she was successful in making him miss it. 

“ You will spoil her,” cried the Lubke. “ You 
must not spoil her. The Fraulein has yet too 
much to learn.” 

“ I think, rather, she has too little to forget,” 
disagreed the Graf. 

“ The idea being that one can do nothing until 
one has done all sorts of things one shouldn’t have 
done! ” The Furman’s version was hypothetical. 

“ And the Herr Graf makes the empty phrase,” 
broke in the Lubke. “ Unless he means one must 
always forget whatever one has done and do 
more.” 

“ Pernicious! ” cried the Furman. 

The Graf had another ecstasy of appreciation. 
The Lubke held her head. “ Ewig frivol ! ” she 
repeated, “ ever frivolous ! There is nothing to 
be done with the American when the American is 
frivolous.” 

“ But surely it is even harder,” reassured the 
Graf, “ when the American is serious. Or at 
least, have I always heard.” 

“As a people we may be too much in earnest 
to know just how it ought to be done,” Victoria 
6 2 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


erupted in sudden patriotism. “ But when we are 
frivolous, we’re sincere enough to be serious about 
it!” 

“ It is not that,” maintained the Baronin. “ The 
Americans are emotional at every turn, knoweth 
the Herr God ! But, Pity-of-God, they have too 
much of their ‘ common-sense ’ with it.” 

The Baronin’s common-sense was an untrans- 
lated English phrase in the midst of German be- 
laden with Deity. She cast it from her with con- 
tempt. 

“ Ach, thou Dear God ! ” she thought to 
sigh a moment later, as though she had under- 
done it. 

But the Austrian Graf as well as the American 
Girl gave closest attention whenever she spoke. 
The Baronin was spare in her insistent bigness. 
Her face narrowed at a brow crowned by an ex- 
tent of front crimp held beneath a net. Merci- 
lessly was she written upon herself. Yet she man- 
aged to be somehow incidental to herself, after 
some manner which precluded the personal, in her 
developed power of outdoing it. 

Indeed, the Herr Baron, her husband, had been 
among the earlier proofs of this quality. He had 
married her out of the professional struggle and 
forever away from the singer’s career. Not be- 
fore she had promised the distinction of odds sur- 

63 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


mounted, however. ( She had early been accorded 
a unique position on the stage, as one of the home- 
liest young women who had ever ventured to 
grace it.) But the Baron’s faith had not tarried 
upon the freshness of her plaudits. He had an- 
chored her gifts with the security of the moneyed 
and very German comfort into which, through 
him, they had lifted her. 

In some sort, this had been a mission of art 
where the perspective of years would heighten 
the effect — like the coloring of a meerschaum. 
Time in its flight had defined the Herr Baron’s 
position as aesthete, critic, and generally utilita- 
rian side-light on the legendary genius of his wife. 
For there were those who claimed to remember 
when the Frau Baronin Lubke had known how 
to sing until you forgot her, which was saying 
much. 

No one ever heard her sing nowadays. The 
more was the teaching, with which she indulged 
herself, a concentration on the ideal. Since others 
must convey her art, the Frau Baronin was at 
sincere pains that they should do her art no in- 
justice. Accurately enough in the language ap- 
plicable to such matters, she might be termed the 
“ Grosser Pedagogue.” 

“ I have ofttimes much sorrow,” she went on, 
“ that the Fraulein must leave me so soon and go 
64 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


to you insincere folk in Vienna. I have a fear 
she will forget to sing . She will try to make 
what she cannot ! And all she can do is to sing ! 
She cannot think the singing. She can only sing 
what I think.” 

“ That ought to suffice,” ventured the Graf, 
absently. 

“ It ought ” The Furman paused to await 

his further verdict. 

He spoke again on his instant of reconsidera- 
tion : “ I will take it back. It is yet not enough. 
The Fraulein has not yet loved. That is what I 
hear when I hear her sing. We require in time — 
there is no hurry — that the Fraulein learn the 
love.” 

“Unsinn!” pooh-hooed the Frau Baronin. 

“ Yet it sounds as if it might be,” condoned the 
Furman. 

“ Most surely,” persisted the Graf. “ I risk 
making an enemy of the Frau Baronin: but she 
will teach you nothing more. You will not learn 
the love of her.” 

“ But, dear Herr Graf ” 

“ You will learn nothing more of her until you 
come to us and learn the love.” 

“ She will not learn the love in Vienna,” argued 
the Frau Baronin, hotly. “ In Vienna she will 
but learn to be loved and to be ‘ keck/ ” 

65 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


The Furman laughed. “ ‘ Love, be loved and 
be keck/ Lovely ! ” 

Behind the closed folding doors they could now 
make out the rustle of assembling guests. 

“ Will not the gracious Fraulein walk with me 
in the garden until the time to begin ? ” proposed 
the Graf. 

“ You must ask my teacher first/’ The Fur- 
man threw a droll glance over her shoulder. 

“ Your teacher’s authority will never be of 
service to her sanction,” returned the Baronin. 
“ In the garden the gracious Fraulein may look 
at the sky — or she may break a rose, for herself, 
which will last an hour.” 

“ She’s a dear,” observed the Furman, as they 
made their exit. “ Between her, and my fairy 
Godmother, Fraulein Ackern ” 

“ Fraulein is to be envied such counsel — and 
such protection ” 

“ Never mind that part of it ! ” 

The Graf acquiesced. 

Troops of arrivals were making their way up 
the front walk. To avoid their encounter Miss 
Furman had led the way through a side door. 
Out among the Frau Baronin’s roses they found 
the Herr Baron, with a large pair of shears on a 
tour of inspection. He came toward them, en- 
grossed with his task. “ They are not so good 
66 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


as they ought to be this year,” he said, holding 
out a stiff nosegay. 

“ The Herr Baron recalls, of course, the Herr 
Graf von Liidersberg,” Miss Furman began. 

“ Pardonne! Gewisz! I had not before seen. 
Very obedient servant, Herr Graf ! ” 

“ Have the honor, Herr Baron. You’ll allow 
that in the company of Fraulein Furman I breathe 
a little while your perfumes which the Fraulein 
is to give forth again as melody.” 

She, to whom he alluded, was already at an in- 
dustrious sniffing. Her short-stemmed bouquet 
buried half her face. 

“ Too bad I can’t wear them,” she deplored. 
“ You see my dress is red.” 

But when the Herr Baron ventured haltingly 
that red and yellow were surely very beautiful, 
Victoria capitulated and pinned them on. Never 
did vanity make more heroic concession to kindli- 
ness of heart. 

“ Would not the Fraulein like me to add a few 
forget-me-nots? ” the Baron inquired. 

“ No, no, please, dear Herr Baron — not forget- 
me-nots! They’re lovely, but they suggest too 
much at this time. I honestly believe they would 
make me cry.” 

The Herr Baron’s eye was of a Saxon blue, 
susceptible to quick effects in moisture. “ I can 
67 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


never remember how soon you leave us,” he apol- 
ogized. “ Ja, ja — so is it always. You come and 
bring light into our Villa; and then you go away 
and sing somewhere else — you Amerikanerinnen. 
Ei, Ja.” 

There was a silence, emphasized on the Herr 
Baron’s sigh. 

“ At least,” pensively argued the Furman, “ you 
still have the Frau Baronin while I — I lose her.” 

A withered rose branch caught the Herr 
Baron’s attention. As he stooped over it, the 
Furman allowed the suggestion of a dipped eye- 
lash to reach Herr Graf, much as she had sent a 
similar signal to the Lubke at an earlier oppor- 
tunity. 

The Graf winked back his fellowship without 
ado, and the Baron uprighted himself again. 
“ They are very bad this year,” he mourned. 

“ A bad year all around,” added the Graf. 
“ ‘ The roses wither and the song-birds flit ’ ” 

“ And nobody responsible,” completed the Fur- 
man. “ Though I’ve always thought flowers were 
moody things — poor Bliimchen! They’re as de- 
pendent on the weather as a woman.” 

“ Moreover, they can’t defend themselves,” re- 
flected the Graf. “ They do not sing ” 

“ They cannot flit ” This, with comfort in 

the circumstances, from the Baron. 

68 


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“ Just so/' Miss Furman admitted. “ But I do 
wonder what puts the song-bird on the defen- 
sive ! ” She appropriated the Baron’s arm. 
“ You go ahead, Herr Graf. The Herr Baron 
and I will follow.” 

It was plain rehabilitation for the faithful old 
Lubke, who had somehow been perceiving the in- 
stants of his vague exclusion. He overflowed in 
beaming protests. “ Dear Fraulein — nein — nein 
— I can’t exact it. You choose very badly. She 
is a spoiled child, Herr Graf ! ” 

“ The Herr Graf knows better,” said the 
Furman. 


VII 


A musicale: wherein another SINGS — AND 
VICTORIA SINGS 

Aldrich had arrived at the Villa Lubke with 
Miss Whiteside. He had been directed through 
the main entrance and into the double salon, 
where were irregular rows of chairs occupied, all 
of them, by punctual guests. Aldrich found for 
his companion a tight fit on a well-crowded sofa 
against the extreme rear wall, and took a stand- 
ing place beside her. His slim five-feet-eleven 
thus towered conspicuously. The seats were so 
arranged as to face certain double doors, no fur- 
ther sign of the nature of the occasion being man- 
ifest until a servant threw them open. It was 
then apparent how the music room was but an 
elongation of the salon. 

A tableau was offered: the Baronin Lubke in 
stately guardianship directly back of her grand 
piano; still further to the rear the accompanist 
propped stiffly on the edge of a sofa matching the 
distant one on which Miss Whiteside was seated; 
70 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


beside him, in pronounced oblivion of his pres- 
ence, one whom Aldrich recognized as Fraulein 
Minnelied of the Dresden Opera. 

The Minnelied was a singer of that new type 
which veers between the “ coloratura ” and the 
“ youthful dramatic.” Being a pupil whom the 
Frau Baronin had triumphantly steered into the 
local theater the preceding fall, she might be 
looked upon as a secure asset against a future in 
the Furman, as yet non-negotiable. She would 
sing, on this occasion, according to the newspaper 
announcements, the great Ophelia aria from 
“ Hamlet.” As for Miss Furman’s absence from 
the picture, it struck Aldrich as the right thing. 
He almost did her the injustice to assume that it 
might be premeditated — on an estimate of stellar 
prerogative. As a matter of fact, she was at the 
moment, quite innocently and to the reader’s cer- 
tain knowledge, keeping her balance, not without 
tests of adroitness, between the old and the new, 
the anachronistic and the animated, the simple 
and (though on untested evidence) the sinister, 
as personified by the very Saxon Baron Lubke 
and the very Viennese Graf von Liidersberg. 

There was abundant witnessing that everyone, 
including the Lubke, awaited her with a degree of 
expectancy. Impatience was set loose in a pre- 
dominant flutter as she at last strode swingingly 
7i 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


in through the portiere held open on the Baronin's 
right. From the shade of these portieres the Herr 
Graf and the Herr Baron were watching her with 
diverse emotions of undefined proprietorship. 
Her entrance might indeed have been a sort of 
provisional retreat, as she crossed the frontage of 
feminine faces with the manner of one who 
marches over slight impediments toward con- 
scious obstacles. Rather solemnly she removed 
her huge hat and laid it upon the piano. Then 
she smiled a little at the Lubke, and her eyes wan- 
dered over the salon until, as if by chance, they 
caught those of Aldrich, far back. 

Into the quick withdrawal of her own went an 
impersonal archness. 

“ My, but I'm late ! " she exclaimed audibly, 
addressing the Frau Baronin. Everyone smiled; 
some even laughed aloud. It would appear that 
the Furman had naively filtered the atmosphere 
into the social ozone it should have been. The 
Baronin's fusionless guests began having a re- 
lieved immediate sense of each other. Adjacently 
seated acquaintances could chat in accents less 
hushed. From corner to corner went the nods 
of recognition, unraveling the bonds of social 
contact. 

“ It begins to feel like a party," said Aldrich, 
giving Miss Whiteside opportunity for the utili- 
72 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


tarian eyebrows which often served her in lieu of 
repartee. 

As the Lubke made it a rule never to mingle 
with her guests until after her programmes — the 
inhospitality being recognized as justified in con- 
sideration of the great strain she must undergo 
in her pupils’ singing — her occasions were liable 
to key her auditors, in the beginning, to some- 
thing like a test of endurance. Aldrich could not 
fail to take mental note of how Miss Furman 
rose superior to such necessity. At her advent 
everyone had felt the tension pieced by an extra 
allowance. 

The accompanist appropriated the piano and 
circumspectly nosed among his notes. Without 
further preliminaries the Furman moved forward 
a little, her hands before her, and began the first 
of the Beethoven Lieder in a vibrant coolness of 
phrases, carefully shaded. The close was at an 
exact balance to the manner of the opening. 

Certain subdued echoes of “ charming,” “ ent- 
zuckend,” “ aber ausgezeichnet,” might be caught, 
floating on the ripple of applause. Satisfying, 
too, were the three succeeding songs. Miss Fur- 
man took her seat on the sofa beside Fraulein 
Minnelied, and had her rich elation of having 
done absolutely nothing of which her teacher 
could disapprove. An elderly critic, standing in 

73 


6 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


the doorway near Aldrich, nodded his head and 
jotted some notes on his pad. Aldrich himself 
was rather lost in marveling that a creature so 
modern should be in such apparent touch with 
anything so classic. 

It was now Fraulein Minnelied’s turn. Rather 
thin and anaemic, with liberal rouge on promi- 
nent cheekbones, she arose for her Ophelia aria. 
Electric madness shot into her glance. Not for 
nothing, Aldrich noted, had this pale, becrim- 
soned lady trodden the boards for eight months 
past in a gamut of roles from Elizabeth to Mimi. 
Her determination to be Ophelia was evident even 
as her liberality of Ophelian madness gave her 
a verve and abandon that made Aldrich feel 
namelessly shy. It might be, the garish daylight 
was lending an unfair grotesqueness to her too 
palpable professionalism. 

“ I’m embarrassed/' he whispered to Miss 
Whiteside. 

“ She's quite dreadfully made up,'' agreed 
Cecilia. 

Yet when Fraulein Minnelied had finished, the 
Baronin's guests were well-nigh as a unit through 
the adhesive power of a thrill — or something they 
were ready to accept as a thrill. Aldrich won- 
dered if it were not because the thrill was so in- 
stantly available. What a kinship throughout 

74 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


humanity ! This was the sort of choice supposed 
to be peculiarly American. And yet the Ameri- 
can girl had sung Beethoven — attuning her Ger- 
man listeners to a good conscience — as a back- 
ground for the German who had raved Ophelian 
trills for their spontaneity. 

The intermezzo was no misadjustment. Fol- 
lowing it, the programme was given back to the 
Furman, who might calm her listeners down to 
the unreserved approval which exasperated Al- 
drich with its touch of patronage. 

“ She’s singing all around that Minnelied 
woman,” was his conviction, “ and they’re treat- 
ing her like a novice.” 

The announcement of her addenda, the Fides 
aria, from “ Prophet,” gave him hope. Here he 
surmised she would have her real innings. He 
watched for the cadenzas which Fraulein Ack- 
ern, and indeed Georgia herself, had told him 
about — cadenzas which had been added to, at 
both ends, especially for the display of her phe- 
nomenal range. They came much as he had ex- 
pected they would. “ Mein Sohn , mein Sohn! 
a mother’s anguish rang flawlessly forth in the 
glissando of Miss Furman’s perfect breathing. 
How strangely cheapened, he thought, were the 
Minnelied’s gasped pyrotechnics before this 
strong tranquillity. 


75 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ Jove/’ he cried, under cover of the applause 
and the tumultuous chatter which sprang up 
among the guests as they began to arise and move 
about. “ Jove — she can sing! ” 

“ Now you know it seems to me,” ventured 
Miss Whiteside, “ that she leaves one a little cold. 
Just fancy ! ” 

“But did you hear those cadenzas?” he in- 
sisted, reddening at some reasonless irritation. 
“ Think of a contralto being able to sing just like 
a soprano — and as high ! ” 

“ I like her best when she doesn’t sing so high. 
Now, really — isn’t it bad for a contralto voice to 
sing so high ? ” 

“ Very — when it can’t do it — or at least, it 
must be.” 

He was forcing his laconic dryness with self- 
control. Further exchange of ideas was merci- 
fully cut by Fraulein Ackern, who, until now, 
had been wedged invisibly in the middle of the 
room. 

“ I have looked for you both, around,” she be- 
gan, with her usual considerate adoption of their 
mother-English, “ and not yet have I reached to 
Miss Furman, who must go here earlier than I 
can arrive.” 

“We have you to thank for much,” Aldrich 
said, clasping her hand. “ We can’t say it just 
76 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


as we should like to, but — doubtless you 
know.” 

Fraulein Ackern’s eyes burned an instant into 
the steady glisten of his own. He felt the return 
of his hand pressure. 

“You must come again one time! We will 
next week go to the Ost-see. But before, you 
must come again to see Miss Furman, one time.” 

“ There’s probably no seeing her here,” he 
deplored. 

At the far end of the room he could just make 
her out, a vortex for the whirl of the current. 
Bold navigation could only bring one through that 
feminine impact. Again this seemed more Amer- 
ican than German. He recognized the power of 
some new-world influence which had stirred even 
this ultimate shore of the Lubke’s salon with its 
ripple. Not enough, however, to eradicate an oc- 
casional “ Tuxedo” coat and embroidered shirt 
front from the Frau Baronin’s male element. 
Little signs of lingering Teuton naivete like this 
made him almost grateful. 

He let Miss Whiteside and Fraulein Ackern 
chat against the impenetrability of his abstraction. 
Steadily he was watching those pivotal points rep- 
resented by the Lubke and her two representa- 
tives. 

“ I think Miss Furman is beckoning to 

77 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


us,” he at length found himself justified in 
announcing. 

There had reached him another jocose glance 
through a thinning in her cortege. 

“ Dear me, no,” insisted Miss Whiteside, with 
the excellent taste she was sometimes capable of 
showing. “ Of course, it is not us — we’re every- 
day occurrences. It is you — the author. She ex- 
pects your congratulations, to be sure! Nicht 
wahr, Fraulein Ackern? ” 

“ I think you can more easy get alone to her,” 
admitted the other solemnly. “ We afterward 
will follow.” 

Aldrich could but obey a mandate so gracefully 
accorded. Miss Furman, whether by some adroit 
maneuver or a fortuitous chance, had pretty well 
extricated herself when he reached her, and fused 
her “ Aber wie geht’s ” with an acute sense of 
tete-a-tete. 

“ Everybody’s been telling me I sing well and 
good-by,” she said. “ So you will please, sir, say 
howdy-do and nothing of my aria.” 

“ Presumably I’ll say nothing worth while,” 
hesitated Aldrich, “ but ” 

“ But you’d rather, since you must — I under- 
stand ! And yet — you mustn’t ! ” 

“ You’ll at least allow me an ‘ unutterable ’ — 
since I’m not to utter anything.” 

78 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“I’m not sure but you’re capable of assuming 
all that I’m too simple to allow. You see, I’ve 
been talking German four years — or trying 
to.” 

“ I’ll try not to be subtle and English,” he 
replied. 

She made an irrelevant departure into an in- 
quiry after Miss Whiteside. Then she desired 
to know of Miss Low. 

“ It appears,” he explained, “ Georgia had 
promised one of the Frau be widowed Schramms 
to look after Katychen this afternoon, while 
Katychen’s mother, and aunt-in-law made some 
sort of business excursion into Bergeshiibel — or 
some such place.” 

Miss Furman observed that he seemed to have 
it reasonably pat. “ But look, we’re going to be 
joined by your other friend,” she cried. 

“ Plainly you’ve made out my good fortune in 
having two ! ” 

“ I had just one — at court,” Miss Furman’s 

tone was confessional; “ but — I don’t know ” 

Her eyes led in the direction of the seated Minne- 
lied, above whom, just at the moment, a Person- 
ality was bending in deference. 

The allusion warranted Aldrich’s polite inquiry. 
Quite frankly, as anticipated, came her response. 
The Personality was that of the Graf von Liiders- 

79 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


berg, to whom largely she owed her engagement 
in Vienna. 

Through departures of guests, who were drift- 
ing out tentatively to the circumstance of there 
being nothing else to do, the salon was now be- 
come habitable. The Graf seemed not entirely 
engrossed. Somewhere, coincident with the mo- 
ment his name had come under discussion, he 
might have been observed to lose the exact thread 
of his discourse with the Minnelied. Three young 
Dresdeners of the embroidered shirt variety were 
awaiting their opportunity. The Graf made way 
for them, and Miss Furman welcomed him chid- 
ingly. 

“ I must say you’ve all been a long time get- 
ting to me,” she generalized. “ One can hardly 
wonder though. * When the moon comes forth 
the little stars retire ! ’ I could never sing an 
Ophelia aria. Never mind. The Herr Graf 
remembers Fraulein Ackern, of course — my 
Schwesterlein — naturally. Miss Whiteside, like 
Mr. Aldrich, is an American.” 

They had all reached her and she presented 
them. “ Now you see what you’ve gotten 
into.” 

The Graf’s Viennese smile twinkled. Miss 
Whiteside summarized herself in her bow. Then 
the Graf touched his lips to Fraulein Ackern’s 
80 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


hand and “ had the honor ” for Aldrich on the 
rebound. 

“ We ought to group ourselves in front of a 
flag,” cried Miss Furman; “but don't take us 
quite so seriously ! ” 

“ You Americans! ” exclaimed the Graf. “ Na 
ja ! — you Americans ! ” 

“ It begins to require looking into?” inquired 
Aldrich. 

“We have never the chance until you have al- 
ready looked into us. Na! Na! ” 

“No matter,” dryly consoled Miss Furman, 
“ since we can never, never see through you.” 

“ And in five days I’m to understand,” the 
Graf was saying to Aldrich, “ you have here your 
Fourth-of-July ? ” 

“ According to the calendar,” nodded Aldrich. 

Fraulein Ackern added that the Herr Graf 
was timely. “ I was going to suggest that the 
Herr Graf ought to remain over and see how we 
can celebrate,” superimposed Cecilia, whose co- 
quetry had lingered into the first opportunity of 
speech. 

“ I have seen already ! ” Vaguely the Herr 
Graf directed his bow toward the Furman. 

Aldrich was set wondering whether the Graf 
might mean the Americans didn’t quite know 
how. 


81 


VIII 


WITHIN THE TEMPLE OF TREES, AND OUT AGAIN ! 

If Aldrich ever permitted himself particular 
enthusiasm for the things he did, it was liable to 
be through conviction that there was no especial 
reason for doing them. Two mornings after the 
musicale, he strolled with Miss Furman through 
the Waldpark. Beyond the woods was penetrant 
heat. Within them were filtrations from the 
pines, bubbles of crisp breath caught in pervasive 
dewiness. The situation was pleasant and unim- 
portant. His moods and modes in Blasewitz, 
these days, had, as he believed, the haphazardry 
which had characterized all the distribution of 
his time for the past several years : ever since he 
had begun to realize how, as far as he was con- 
cerned, the only way to accomplish anything was 
to have an easy, complete conviction of doing 
nothing as you did it. 

Somewhere in this stroll Aldrich had reached 
a point where he was explaining to Miss Furman 
how he had altogether too much conscience to 
8 2 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


dare permit himself to have any. He found her 
irresponsive with perfect comprehension. 

“ But isn’t that better,” he persisted, “ isn’t 
that better than having so little you’re simply 
forced to have a great deal ? ” 

“ You involve it enough,” she replied. “ May- 
be in those two sides of it you get the difference 
between talent and genius. And people are al- 
ways trying to get at that.” 

Nothing in her pleased Aldrich more than 
did her making this opportunity for keeping 
it up. 

“ That would be to say that genius is born with- 
out the safeguard it must create in self-defense; 
while talent comes into the world equipped with 
all sorts of safeguards it must forget in order to 
create anything. Well ” 

“ Stop,” exclaimed Miss Furman. “ Some of 
us might take fire on that doctrine.” 

The ring was dryness rather than fear. Her 
mandate was nothing less than dramatic. He 
looked at her, and caught her smiling. 

“ I say, Miss Prima-Altistin — that’s what you 
are, is it not ? — you’re very terrible. Or rather, 
it’s very terrible to be thus victimized by the truth 
of one’s own offhandedness. I have a sort of 
suspicion you’re to blame.” 

“ Oh, for that matter,” she asserted, “ I’m to 

83 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


blame for much. But you mustn’t blame me that 
I am.” 

“ I — I beg your pardon,” he stammered. 
“ Where did I get the idea that we must never, 
never do anything but joke together? ” 

“ It’s a flattering notion — I can see that. But 
I can’t live up to it,” she said. “ You might 
as well prepare yourself. You’re going to find 
me a very heavy girl — one who can’t be frivo- 
lous when she’s serious, or clever when she’s 
hilarious.” 

“ Good,” he declared. “ I’m going to find you 
that!” 

But he suddenly wondered if he were not a cad 
to be so much of what her manner privileged. 
There is a law of boundary which a man draws 
in his converse with a woman, and invariably 
places at shrinkage to her own. 

“ I think, though,” he explained, “ I’m consid- 
erably afraid of the good thing you might say any 
time without knowing it.” 

“ That’s another compliment I can’t enjoy be- 
cause I’m not equal to it,” she answered. “ I 
must handicap you right now on all that sort of 
thing. To begin with, I’ve been really cultivat- 
ing you — and for a purpose. / invited you up for 
the strawberries, and then yesterday, up to tea 
with the two. And, of course, you must know I 

84 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


managed you into fancying you arranged this 
walk for this morning.” 

“ I honestly didn’t suspect it,” he assured her. 
“ Though that wouldn’t have made me fancy it 
less.” 

“ Well, I had the purpose anyway,” she went 
on. “ You’re almost the victim of my schem- 
ing.” 

“ Victimize ahead.” 

“ The fact is, I’ve wanted to talk to someone 
just about now, though I can’t explain why, from 
the start, I’ve had the notion that you were the 
someone required. Of course, I have coun- 
selors and advisers. Frau Baronin Lubke bullies 
me into the straight and narrow path of my work. 
The Herr Baron puts salve on the dumps she 
sends me into about every other day. Fraulein 
Ackern is a natural standby. But, for all of them, 
I’m still a good deal of a fish out of water. There 
are points of view only an American can give me. 
Needless to add, the American must be a ‘ man.’ ” 

‘‘I’m so glad I’m that,” Aldrich broke out; 
“ that is — if I deserve it.” 

“ Probably you don’t,” she replied. “ The luck 
of being a man is too good for most of them. 
But I think your luck goes a step further. You 
happen to be a man and an American, and nearer 
the right sort than those who come to Dresden to 

85 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


let their hair grow. Eve sort of thought you're 
the man I’d like to tell things to, about myself.” 

He laughed down what he felt to be his awk- 
wardness and told her she put his luck beyond 
question. “ Be sure you make it interesting,” he 
added. 

“ I don't have to. That's the particularly in- 
teresting thing of it.” 

“ I think,” he admitted after a moment, “ I 
think I must be a cad to so dread to take anything 
Miss Victoria Furman might say to me se- 
riously ! ” 

“ You are rather ugly about it,” she agreed. 
“ You don't seem willing to believe that I have 
a version of me — for somebody. That my ver- 
sion of me should bewilder me a little — should, 
in fact, make me a little pathetic.” 

Aldrich felt a remorseful sweating as of a bru- 
tality. “ I'm contemptible,” he stammered. “ Do 
go on.” 

“ To begin with, even after four years over 
here, I'm, in a way, new to myself. Four years 
in Dresden is a very little time, after all, to live 
down twenty-two spent on a little house and gar- 
den place near Utica, New York. My father I 
can’t remember. I had my mother, though, and 
two big brothers to take his place — suppos- 
edly ” 


86 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ Didn’t they? ” 

He was not quite sure whether she meant he 
should ask it. 

“ Well, they never interfered with my helping 
myself — or, at least, until I began to do it a little 
better than they’d taken into calculation. Then I 
must admit they got on my nerves a little. But 
they quickly got off again. All this was after 
mother died, of course. 

“ Understand,” she went on to explain, “ they 
were what you would call 4 good ’ boys. They’ve 
never gotten over it. One of them is now a Sun- 
day School superintendent in a swell Methodist 
church in Newark, I believe. The other helped 
found a branch of the Y. M. C. A. in some town 
west of Utica. No doubt they’ve developed into 
staunch, upright men — Americanly upright, with 
an eye to business which knows better than to 
half do it.” 

“ What do they do?” he found himself inter- 
ested enough to ask. 

“ Oh, keep shop, of course. Hardware and 
notions, in two places, and joint interest in both, 
I suppose. To tell the truth, I can’t say defi- 
nitely. Their higher prosperity struck them after 
they’d cast me off.” 

“ Cast you off ! ” Aldrich paid tribute to his 
New England origin in the wince of his aston- 
87 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


ishment. “ But I forget : you’re following my 
injunction and making it interesting.” 

“ Just what they did, though. They always de- 
clared I would be no sister of theirs if I ever went 
on the stage. Three years ago I began to think 
I might go on the stage, some day. I didn’t ask 
their advice about it. I sent them a photograph 
of myself in the costume of Adriano.” 

“ Wasn’t that a little unfair? ” he pointed out. 
“ What was Adriano to you ? ” 

“ Everything. He was the first role I studied. 
Somebody loaned me the hose and doublet for the 
picture. You see, I divined, without knowing 
why, that I should sing him some day. So I 
gave them a three years’ option on the family 
attitude.” 

“ Too long a range,” Aldrich chided. Some- 
thing in her very drollery made him serious. He 
felt strangely old, puzzled, almost emburdened. 
Not before had any woman so put to rout his 
mental habit of juvenility. 

“ They wrote just once after that.” 

“ In brotherly fashion ? ” 

“ From their point of view — yes. They didn’t 
hesitate at the issue. Following a profession 
which required that I wear such costumes in pub- 
lic was a question of my conscience, they told me; 
and they left me to arrange my conscience in the 
88 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


matter with God. They were very conscientious 
about dropping it just where God and I might con- 
veniently take it up. So you see Fve — had to 
stand alone — some.” 

“ I think I do — I think I had already ” 

“ Oh, but it would amuse you,” she hurried on, 
“ to hear how I set about planning this trip 
abroad. I had owned an old square piano with a 
green embroidered cover. I sold the piano, along 
with a lot of other things, but I kept the cover 
and dyed it a seal brown. Out of it I pieced to- 
gether a traveler’s blouse and a dinky little Tam- 
o’-Shanter to wear on the ship.” 

“ Brown is a becoming shade,” said Aldrich. 
Miss Furman was clad this morning in a walking 
suit of that color. Subconsciously, through her 
allusions, she had raised chin and chest to a sense 
of the supple perfection of its lines. 

“ My mind’s eye didn’t see clothes like this in 
those days,” she said, looking down at herself. 
“ As I’ve never been what you call a ‘ dreamer,’ 
I couldn’t permit it to. I was prosperous enough, 
too, according to my standards. I had a district 
school four miles out of Utica, and a good posi- 
tion as contralto in the quartette of the richest 
Utica church. My choir job brought me almost 
as much as my eight hours a day in the school, 
though it meant no work but the Friday choir- 
89 


7 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


meeting, and the two Sunday services. That was 
how it first dawned on me that singing was much 
better paid, allowing for time and energy in- 
volved, than school-teaching.” 

Their peregrinations had taken turns up odd 
paths, contracting in spirals, until, on looking 
about, they found themselves in a thick inclosure 
of trees. Above was a triangle of sky. There 
was the accentuated silence which may lie in the 
midst of sounds at removal. 

“ This must be the holy-of-holies of the Wald- 
park,” said Aldrich. “ Can’t we sit down? ” 

They appropriated the solitary bench backed 
against an urn overflowing with vines. On either 
side, behind them, retreated the curves of the 
gravel walks. If they looked directly ahead, they 
were confronted by an effect of limitless forest 
and underbrush. 

“ My story was still in Utica,” she observed; 
“ but this is almost private enough for me to bring 
it down to Vienna.” 

“ Oh, do stop awhile at Utica,” he begged, “ at 
least — until you’ve left it.” 

She appeared to cogitate. 

“ I mean, of course,” he thought it best to ex- 
plain, “ that nothing could possibly be more inter- 
esting than you’ve managed to be already.” 

“ Oh, that’s all right,” she assured him. “ I 
90 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


was just thinking how marvelously, how almost 
supernaturally, we, all of us, alter — that’s all. 
My ideal of success in those Utica days was our 
soprano in the quartette. She had been to New 
York and studied. She had a class of thirty 
pupils, who paid her a dollar a half-hour, and 
sometimes took two half-hour lessons a week — 
some of them. The church paid her just double 
what it paid me, because she sang and selected the 
music, and called down the organist, when he 
needed it. In short, she was a money-maker; all 
because she had been to New York and studied. 
Well, if she had been to New York and done that, 
I made up my mind I would go her one better. I 
would go to Europe. The idea staggered me at 
first, but I made myself get used to it. I would 
go to Europe and when I came back I would settle 
in a larger town — Syracuse maybe — and maybe 
command two dollars a half-hour — who could 
say! In towns like Syracuse were people who 
would pay that price without leaving home to do 
it. And there were choirs that paid more money, 
too, though I was a little doubtful whether they 
paid them to contraltos — I am yet, for that mat- 
ter. One of the first things to impress me even 
on this side was that a contralto, who is not a 
soprano as well, is rather out of it.” 

“ Not too sudden with your Vienna ! ” he 
91 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


warned. “ That is an imperially operatic prob- 
lem. I’m going to be impudent enough to remind 
you you're still in the choir." 

She turned a quick face upon him. “ Vienna 
gets easily on your nerves. What is it you're 
fearing about Vienna? " 

Aldrich’s mental habit of juvenility came back 
with redoubled energy. He could have blushed 
like a schoolboy, and was not sure he did not. 

“ And now I’m horrid," she atoned. “ You’re 
just interested, that’s all; I understand perfectly. 
But there’s not much more to the village-choir 
phase of it. When the little house and garden 
had been sold at mother’s death, I’d saved my 
share, so I had about three hundred dollars in the 
bank. I got enough out of my piano and a few 
other things for a ticket over on a Dutch line — 
a fifteen-day steamer. I told you how I got my 
traveling costume as well." 

The long ensuing silence brought her to in- 
quiry. “ Well," she challenged, “ I guess that’s 
about all ! " 

“ You give me the right to tell you it isn’t," 
said Aldrich. “ You haven’t made your point 
yet." 

“ I’ll have to admit," she replied, “ that I can’t 
quite do that without getting to Vienna." 

“ But you wanted to lay some sort of abstract 
92 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


case before me: or, to use your own words, be- 
fore the first reasonably decent chap who should 
happen along, and happen at the same time to be 
an American. Aren’t you responsible for this 
abject stage at which I’m actually protesting my 
right to hear it ? ” 

“ I’m not responsible for the fact that you’re 
awfully spoiled,” she returned. “ That is — not 
entirely — even though I am doing my best to help 
it on — anybody could see that. But any man who 
has the courage to admit being reasonably 
O. K. must at least have some notion of the 
thing.” 

“ I deserve it all,” he humbly admitted. 

“To say the truth, you do impress me as de- 
cent — temperamentally decent — for no reason 
you can help; and I’m willing to admit that’s 
been your strong card.” 

It was evident calculated candor and impulsive- 
ness. But it bespoke a type of sincerity to which 
he was unaccustomed; a sincerity without elabo- 
ration, without discrimination for subtle values; 
mystifying, therefore, in the proportion of its 
directness. Incidentally, it was a sincerity at 
which his mother would have shuddered. It re- 
moved Miss Furman beyond the longest distance 
lense in Georgia’s equipment. This he realized 
with a smile, rather annoyed that his familiarity 

93 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


with their standards should (in Miss Furman’s 
presence) so little affect him. 

The notion of this elemental woman, whose 
first name was Victoria, resorting to some crudity 
of concealed motive might only be dismissed as 
grotesque. Vague sympathies hungered out to 
her against the protests of their own traditions. 
There was, unaccountably, no note in her voice, 
no shade to her meanings which failed to awaken 
understanding, in a fashion, and loyalty in a way; 
but, most poignantly of all, pleasure, to the full 
degree! His instincts might make no demurrer 
at Miss Furman’s charm; not even though his 
critical faculty should artificially proscribe her as 
a mere apotheosized chorus girl; and he could 
see well enough how destiny, playing with smaller 
stakes, might easily have made her just that. It 
didn’t matter. He awaited. 

“ I’m slowly getting to it,” she said, with the 
apt divination which did not surprise him because 
he had learned to expect it in all women; “ slowly, 
because I still believe you’re a little frightened.” 

“ Oh,” he confessed, “ for that matter — well — 
indeed I am! But somehow I’d like to be even 
more so.” 

This was the first surrender on which he could 
see she might have put her finger. She rambled 
on, heedlessly: 


94 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ The real thing I’ve wanted to get at, from 
somebody, some reliably unbiased person, touches 
my work — I suppose I might call it my * art ’ ! ” 

“ I’ll certainly insist that you might ! ” 

Here, at least, he could be unhesitant. 

“ Up to a comparatively recent time my art 
was merely a question of my faithfulness in doing 
just what the Lubke told me. I had only to do 
that as industriously as I could. When I first 
came to Dresden I used to get up at dawn and peg 
away at French and Italian; German, I was pick- 
ing up, and grinding at from dawn until dark. 
Two girls I’d met on the steamer coming over 
clubbed in with me. We had a room together 
with three convertible divans. We used to make 
a great pot of rich soup in the morning. It was 
very nourishing and lasted all day. My two 
room-mates were not only trumps — they were real 
mascots. I’d never heard of the Lubke, but they 
had come over in the especial hope of some day 
reaching a summit where she’d take them as 
pupils. They found my teacher for me — and, so 
far, that’s the really greatest thing that has hap- 
pened in my life.” 

She paused with glowing cheek. Sheer grati- 
tude and enthusiasm had made her breathless. 
Aldrich was annoyed at this foolish desire to 
seize the white hand which so firmly gripped the 

95 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


back of the bench, as she faced him. The charm 
of her had gotten beyond his saner calculation. 
From now on he foresaw necessary resistance in 
himself. He was troubled. 

“ But it can’t stay that way,” she resumed her 
theme. “If the Lubke keeps on being the greatest 
thing that ever happened, forever, I might as well 
stop. Yet it’s just as she says : I’m nothing with- 
out her. I’ve no temperament. I’m no prude, 
and yet, thus far I suppose I might be designated 
as a 4 nice ’ girl. That’s just the trouble. In this 
business I’m taking up, I find a strange mandatory 
law that you mustn’t be just that — not quite. I 
sing too nicely. ‘ Nice ’ is the word, all the time. 
I’ve done all a 4 nice ’ girl can do, even when she’s 
not a prude. And still there’s no glimpse of the 
real thing — of Temperament. My consciousness 
of having done the best I could leaves me 
feeling as if I’d done very little of anything. 
I’m more dependent than ever at the very 
moment when I’m expected to show myself an 
artist.” 

“ I wonder,” he mused, “ if one may not have 
emotions without quite doing what a nice girl 
wouldn’t.” 

“ Or,” he explained, as she took her turn at 
musing, “ wouldn’t a nice girl’s emotions be rather 
nicer — better, I mean — and wouldn’t it be a 
96 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


higher art that would be more benefited by that 
sort.” 

“ How clear you are ! ” she broke out. “ You’re 
about to have me singing in oratorio and some 
church on Fifth Avenue — just what I first 
thought of when it began to look pretty certain 
I could take my own option as to where and how 
I would sing.” 

“ By the way,” he digressed, “ what became of 
the room-mates who took you to the Lubke ? ” 

She shrugged out an “ Ach.” 

“ Just that,” she added. “ They’re singing in 
churches — not on Fifth Avenue, nor in New York 
— and they have prosperous vocal classes.” 

“ Sorry I brought it up,” said Aldrich. “ I 
surely didn’t mean to clench the argument for 
you. I should like to see you singing in churches 
and oratorio — in a big, convincing, untheatrical 
way.” 

“ I might have done so,” she reflected. “ But 
there was a final parting of the ways. I chanced 
to meet a gentleman — one Graf von Liidersberg 
— who thought me altogether fitted for opera. 
Between you and me he’s going to find himself 
mistaken. You can naturally see how I can’t 
let him know that — not at this stage of the 
game.” 

“ Vienna at last,” sighed Aldrich. 

97 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Then both of them laughed as the readiest pre- 
cipitant for this nucleus. 

The narrative had taken on many significances. 
If she meant to imply far more than she said, rel- 
ative to the Vienna engagement, she had surely 
done so gracefully. “ You see,” she exclaimed, 
moving as if to arise, “ my brothers have cast me 
off a little prematurely. They ought to wait, per- 
haps, until Fve become an opera-singer. All I’ve 
done thus far is to decide to sing in opera — or 
make a feint at it.” 

He comprehended how she spoke the truth 
without quite comprehending her eagerness that 
he should regard it as such. 

“ Those brothers will write you,” he said, “ on 
paper with a Y. M. C. A. heading, and reclaim 
the family tie when you’ve made your first hit in 
Vienna.” 

“ That bothers me, too, for — well, just suppose 
it should happen that it couldn't happen until — I 
least deserved their recognition.” 

“ You’d surely get it, nevertheless.” 

“ That would be like welcoming the prodigal 
though she never returned, and ” 

“ Assuredly. Only the prodigal who never re- 
turns — who never has to — is ever welcomed now- 
adays.” 

“ Great! ” she cried. “ You’ve done me just 

98 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


the good I sort of thought you might. I sized 
you up from the very start, you know. I’m not 
going to be disappointed. Let’s shake hands 
upon it.” 

The firm fingers went out to him. He seized 
them with such grip as to bring a little “ oh ” 
from her. She arose in the act of releasing her- 
self. Directly in front of her a child’s hoop rolled 
around the curved path and fell in limp obeisance 
at her feet. Immediately appeared the owner, to 
add her courtesy with elation at the coincidence. 

“ But, Katychen,” she exclaimed, “ where did 
you drop from ? ” 

“ It was my hoop that dropped,” corrected 
Katychen. “ I have to go where my hoop goes.” 

“ Katychen knows the park wrong-side-out,” 
said Aldrich. 

“ It is not such a very big park. Everything 
seems big to us children, of course.” Katychen 
deprecated the condition. “ But you have found 
the most beautiful place in it. I always play at 
fairyland on that bench.” 

“ Isn’t it a little lonely? ” Miss Furman asked 
her. “ I should be afraid.” 

“ Ach, but the lonelier the place, the quicker 
the fairies find it. That must the Herrschaften 
know already ! ” 

Aldrich addressed Miss Furman in English, 

99 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


remarking that Katychen’s wisdom would be ter- 
rifying were it just a bit more unconscious. “ As 
it is,” he said, “ it’s not quite innocent enough 
to be quite supernatural. Do you think she un- 
derstands everything ? ” 

For reply Miss Furman sat down again and 
drew the little hatless, wizened figure to her. 

“ YouVe nearly undone a hair ribbon,” she 
said, adjusting the diminutive bow at the united 
end of Katychen’s two braids. 

“ It is always untidy to play,” Katychen ob- 
served, “ and dull to study. Herr God ! what 
shall one do! Now if one were a boy. But 
when one is a girl one can only sit still 
and think of when one will be grown up and 
married.” 

Miss Furman looked at Aldrich significantly. 
“True-blue German!” she said in English. 

“ But a boy can’t sit still at all,” said Aldrich 
to Katychen, “ and so you have the boy at an 
advantage. You can think it all out just right 
while you sit still. He can’t ! ” 

Miss Furman nodded. “ And we’ll fix him 
before we’re through, won’t we, Katychen?” 

“ Oh, as for you,” Katychen poised her hoop- 
stick speculatively, “ you are a singer — you need 
not marry ! ” 

“ Katychen is quaint in German,” said Al- 


ioo 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


drich. “ Fm rather glad we don’t have to de- 
cide about her in English.” 

“ That’s the way with so many things over 
here,” sighed Miss Furman. 

“ Ah, yes,” Aldrich agreed. “ Once we give 
up our nationality, it’s almost impossible to know 
just how we’re behaving.” 

Attentively Katychen took in the meaningless 
jargon, remarking at the close that she would 
have English next year in the school. 

Miss Furman found this “ very nice.” 

“ But you mustn’t let it spoil you,” warned 
Aldrich. 

“ Ach, no,” Katychen shook her head. “ We 
will study French, too.” 

Aldrich did not smile, but pointed out that 
Katychen had the right idea. “If one knew 
enough languages one could say just about what 
one would like on a scheme of subdivision ” 

“ And yet be always perfectly ‘ proper,’ ” Miss 
Furman agreed. “ I’ve often thought so, too. 
And I’ve wondered whether there isn’t some 
similar way of distributing our conscience — 
portioning it out according to utility, and local 
demand.” 

“ The Herrschaften do nothing but talk Eng- 
lish,” Katychen deplored. “ Now, Fraulein Low 
and Herr Adolf have been speaking nothing but 
ioi 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


German. It is easier to understand people when 
they do that.” 

“ Herr Adolf ? ” interrogated Aldrich, mildly. 

“ He is back. He came last night. He walks 
now in the Waldpark with Fraulein Low. I came 
with them, but I wanted to roll my hoop and so 
I ran ahead. They’ve lost me, very apparently.” 

The information was unexpected. Miss Fur- 
man again rose from the seat and stood non- 
committal. He felt her bristle with raillery. 

“ Have you met the Herr Adolf ? I have 
not,” he said, with droll reliance on her repres- 
sion. “ But he’s surely mismated with Geor- 
gia.” 

“ Doubtless he carried her off by main force.” 

“ Oh, I mean merely that the Herr in question 
is a particular friend of Miss Whiteside’s,” he 
hastened to explain. “ And Georgia and Cecilia 
rarely choose the same people.” 

“ There is such a thing as a woman’s being 
chosen — instead of choosing — and preferring 
it!” 

Katychen laid her hoop-stick horizontally at 
her feet and lifted a stiff right arm. “ Ach,” she 
cried, “ there they are ! ” 

Conjecturably, Miss Low and Herr Adolf had 
stumbled upon this path in the same innocence 
which had led Katychen thither. The appropriate 


102 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


thing was to go toward them and meet them 
half-way, but Georgia was already waving her 
parasol. 

“ So Katychen found you without looking, 
while we’ve been looking everywhere!” Miss 
Low came up with her escort. She produced a 
folded slip, recognizable at some distance as an 
official telegram of the Saxon realm. 

“ This came for you,” she said to Aldrich. 
“ It happened to be unsealed and one of the Frau 
Schramms informed me of its contents. Your 
mother will be here this afternoon — from Brus- 
sels.” 

“ Think of mother’s getting so restive,” he 
laughed. “ I can remember when a trip over to 
Boston was an upheaval like an earthquake.” 

As the next thing in order Herr Adolf was 
presented. He had arrived that morning. 

“ Cecilia ought to have come on the search with 
us,” Georgia found opportunity to say; “ but she 
didn’t feel equal to it.” 

“ She feared you might find me,” said Aldrich. 
“ Never mind — Katychen came ! ” 

“ You’re overlooking Herr Adolf, who came, 
too,” Miss Furman reminded him. Her accent 
was hypothetical. 

“ Really,” exclaimed Herr Adolf, with the per- 
fect British inflection which preceded his reputa- 
103 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


tion everywhere like a banner, “ really — it was a 
jolly, interesting idea. I insisted — really 1 ” 

They soon divided into twos again, Katychen 
and her hoop being somewhere within the orbit. 
Aldrich and Miss Furman fell behind just out 
of earshot. 

In vague bewilderment at how to open out 
again, Aldrich took up Herr Adolf. “ That fel- 
low ! ” he said, and hesitated, “ that fellow — de- 
serves studying.” 

“ I should think as much ! ” 

“ Oh, I don’t mean that way ! That’s for our 
Cecilia ” 

“Poor Miss Whiteside! She seems to fill in 
all the voids where you don’t mean it that 
way.” 

“ But believe me,” he protested. “ I was sim- 
ply admiring the deftness of this Herr Adolf in 
carrying a well-bred twentieth-birthday manner- 
ism into a forty-fifth year maturity. It’s even 
more British than his English — though he must 
have brought that clear down from Eton and 
short- jackets.” 

Miss Furman speculated perceptibly. “ You 
say that — you, whose mamma comes to claim you 
at twenty-nine.” 

“ I’m thirty-one,” corrected Aldrich, “ and it’s 
really no question of being claimed.” The speech 
104 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


might have been icy. He draped it with indul- 
gence. 

“ I didn’t make my point,” she said, digress- 
ing. “ You were right. I talked to you against 
time all morning and managed just to miss get- 
ting at what I was after. I didn’t make my point. 
I couldn’t make it — probably because I don’t know 
you well enough — not yet; or maybe you ought 
to know me. Anyway, your mother is coming, 
and something tells me I shall not know you any 
better. I can see the beginning of the end.” 

Aldrich would have sought her eye with his 
own, but he found not courage. Her tone might 
have been interpreted as pensive with the inevi- 
table. Her step put negation on her humility, 
with the defiance she could not keep back. 

“ Ah, me,” he confessed at last, veiling an un- 
mistakable ardor in weary frankness. “ Ah, me; 
I wish I could.” 


8 


IX 


ON THE BRUHLISCHE TERASSE, WHENCE MRS. 

CHURCHILL-ALDRICH DEFINES AN 
EMOTIONALIST 

Against his will Aldrich had to see how Miss 
Furman's confidences might be construed as a 
mere plan in her own defense. In fact, this 
would be the approved cynical outlook. She 
might be judged as setting herself to rights, 
crudely, against hypothetical estimates of what 
he had heard or what he might think. He saw 
the point of view. That he could see it aroused 
his repugnance, as his quickness, in apprehending 
it, put him to shame. To begin with, such a pos- 
sibility exaggerated the value of his opinion, 
which might well be less than nothing to her. 
That side was as nothing, however, beside the 
elusive pathos of her incoherence, with something 
she wished to face, and candidly, yawning ahead. 
She was so dauntlessly of a mind not to look 
back; so inadmittedly of a dread to quite look for- 
ward. He could see how he himself was but 
106 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


an embodied fortuity. Her confusions would 
doubtless seek utterance, here, there, with or with- 
out warrant, until they found a solvent. 

Or until destiny silenced them ! 

At this final thought his recoil so stamped him 
that when, at the end of the walk, he took leave 
of her at Fraulein Ackern’s gate, she exclaimed : 

“ Why — how pale you are ! ” 

And since his mere smile was as nothing, she 
added with that casual desperateness in which she 
was inclined to take refuge : “ Is it because I 
give you so little to blush about — or so much ! ” 

He tugged at his answer, only to come out 
with the direct form of it he had so tried to 
escape. 

“ I guess it’s merely because Fm so very anx- 
ious you should keep on singing just as you sang 
two days ago.” 

“ It’s a nice way to say it.” Her hand was on 
the vine-hung gate. She swung it ajar, made as 
if to close it again, and swung it back. “ But at 
bottom it would seem to suggest my point — that I 
sing in opera without waking up and becoming 
an opera-singer. As you know, that will be 
either dull or difficult.” 

“ Be an artist ” he preached, feeling absurd, 
but very much in earnest. 

“ If I only knew what you meant by that ! And 
107 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


if you only could know how I looked forward 
to being one. That’s the whole trouble. How 
can I find the ‘ something lacking ’ the Frau 
Baronin’s always talking about ? ” 

“ Well — not by deliberately setting out to lack 
more than you do already.” Everything was con- 
triving to make Aldrich blunt — and helpless. 

Miss Furman laughed. “ You’re flattering, 
and not presumptuous, though you compel me to 
justify you by reiterating that I’ve been wanting 
someone to talk to me just as you must think you 
may. It’s been an awfully nice walk. Auf 
wiedersehen.” 

They shook hands. He never went through 
this handshaking process with her without think- 
ing how very much she made a good thing of it. 
It might be temperamental to her or it might 
be her four years in a handshaking country. 
Howsoever accounted for, when she wished it to 
be, it was hearty and final, and left one with no 
thought of looking back. 

Aldrich realized that he had over-tarried on 
his leave-taking, and hurried breathlessly to the 
Pension Schramm. 

He was late, but he thought to find Georgia 
awaiting him, ready to take the first tram for the 
station. Georgia was not awaiting, however. 
She had gone already. He had to make the best 
108 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


of clamoring information to that effect from 
Katychen and Miss Whiteside. 

“ But we agreed to meet here/’ he exclaimed, 
“ when we all parted at the edge of the Wald- 
park.” 

“ Just fancy,” marveled Miss Whiteside. 
“ But your mother must be met, you know. 
Georgia couldn’t really tell how long you were 
going to be, you know. It was late — and the 
uncertainty of the Blasewitz trams ” 

“ I see,” he interrupted. “ I’m not the right 
sort of son. But there’s time, anyway, I think. 
Good-by ! ” 

Once seated in the trolley-car, his self-reproach 
that Georgia should have gone on without him 
was assuaged by the reflection that she had, after 
all, been in a bit of a hurry, and that Herr Adolf 
was evidently still her escort. By great good luck 
he ran across them making their exit from the 
huge arch of the Central Bahnhof. They bore his 
- mother triumphantly between them. A luggage- 
laden porter followed in their wake. 

“ That is he ! ” said the mother, espying him 
first. “ Archibald, we thought we had missed 
you.” 

“ Being my mother, you’ll forgive me,” he said, 
kissing the cheek she presented. “ To tell you 
the truth, I’m — I’m late ! ” 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ Thus you spoil my loyal fib,’ 7 laughed Geor- 
gia. “ I was explaining that you’d probably taken 
the wrong way into the station.” 

“ Oh, mother saw through it, rest assured,” he 
replied. 

He had indeed much earlier decided that his 
mother must have been seeing through many 
things. There was no other accounting for what 
had brought her so far, so suddenly. It was like 
her to do so, however. Always she had had the 
way of leaving him quite to others and then dis- 
posing of him quite for herself. Throughout his 
life she had somehow managed to arise from pre- 
occupied remoteness at the eleventh hour, on 
wings of divination. 

There came, moreover, enlightenment, in a 
slip, careless or otherwise, which she made rela- 
tive to some fine, newsy letter from Cecilia. 

“ Cecilia,” he observed, “ is our Deus ex ma- 
china. Without her nothing could ever happen to 
any of us.” 

Georgia held a warning forefinger. 

“Or if it did,” he apologized, “we wouldn’t 
know it ! ” 

The Herr Adolf laughed immoderately. “ Be- 
ing the particular friend of the lady under discus- 
sion,” thought Aldrich, “ he evidently considers 
he has the right.” 

no 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


As for Mrs. Churchill-Aldrich, she was pre- 
occupied with the question of her hotel, which 
she insisted on selecting before lending herself as 
guest to the experiment of a Pension. They had 
her registered within three easy squares of the 
station, after which she committed herself to them 
provisionally. 

The day or so of sightseeing culminating with 
the Dresden Fourth-of-July was the designated 
official reason for Mrs. Churchill-Aldrich’s pres- 
ence in the city. The Fourth came duly. Be- 
neath the Dresdener Terasse swept the Elbe with 
excess of glint and burnish. Broadly it gave 
its blue, flaring its search mirror out against the 
flutter of American pennants and the stability of 
international rouge at the open-air tables. 

At four o’clock on this American fete-day for 
foreigners, the Terasse was thronged to its vis- 
ible limit with its capacity yet endlessly tested 
by fresh arrivals. 

“ Here, if ever,” remarked Aldrich, “ is the 
traditional room for one more. With everybody 
equally ready to tip, there must be.” 

He addressed the witticism more particularly 
to Georgia. The party included also his mother, 
Miss Whiteside, and Herr Adolf. They had 
found a table well out in the sunlight. 

But Georgia was letting her eyes wander up 


hi 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


and down the river, which might be, for the 
responsive mood, a sheet of beauty veritable: 
spanned here and there with filigree arches, and 
picked out in dashes of quicksilver. 

Aldrich had been more occupied with a new 
phase of Lackey-dom, the restaurant waiter being 
a species he never wearied of studying. It had 
not escaped him how, to-day, this waiter’s usual 
keen scent for the social shading was as naught. 
Everybody must be seated. Everybody was 
ready to pay extra for the privilege. The waiter 
was reduced to plain unescapable democracy in 
silver across the palm. To be sure, there were 
isolated instances: silver transmuted to yellow, 
in fingers potently gloved — miraculous results in 
the discovery of choice nooks of vantage when 
there seemed left no nooks of any description. 
But, on the whole, the rule of the day obtained. 
At elbow range with Aldrich and his assuredly 
circumspect party, a cocotte, with her wealth of 
chemical yellows and enamel pinks, drooped aug- 
mented lashes before the frank curiosity of a rus- 
set Grafin (Aldrich knew the Grafin by sight!) 
across three feet of table. Mrs. Churchill-Aldrich 
was in particular caught by the spectacle of a 
type unknown to her, a “ Gigerl,” indeed, with 
checked suit, pale spats, and monocle; compelled, 
moreover, to regulate arm space with a high- 


112 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


school boy, a “ Gymnasiast ” whose magenta cap 
emphasized his hyper-babyish immaturity. Mrs. 
Aldrich found it horrifying that mere children 
like this lad should take their beer from huge 
steins as he even now was taking his. The Gigerl, 
beside him, sipped at some highly decorative lem- 
onade through a straw. 

“ You cannot tell,” Herr Adolf added his re- 
flection, with that faint elaboration and lisp which 
was the only suggestion of German in his British 
speech. “ Beer is very innocent; but the gym- 
nasiast is very young. He may come to lemon- 
ade yet.” 

Miss Whiteside accused him of being a cynic. 
Out from the pavilion came the music: Undine; 
Yankee-doodle; diluted instrumentation, dimly 
Strauss-like. The cafe orchestra programme had 
made Fourth-of-July concessions. Many loyal 
Germans were seeing in such signs the “ Ameri- 
canization of the world.” The theory had even 
been destined to a mild flurry of pamphleteering 
after the Cuban war and Prince Henry’s visit. 

There came a propitious moment. The succes- 
sion of arrivals lulled. The music quieted to 
shadowy cello-whispers groping out into the sun- 
light. Round about went widening the rustle 
which announces a center of interest somewhere 
in a heterogeneity. Aldrich felt the horizons fill 
113 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


with Victoria Furman. They seemed clamorous 
of her. She was coming in their direction with a 
bravura of gait unimpeded by obstacles or apol- 
ogetic stand-asides. The Graf von Liidersberg 
followed in her wake. 

Miss Furman was crowned with a hat, huge, 
white, and beplumed. It gave a splendor of em- 
phasis to the American flag pinned across the 
bosom of her white serge. The effect she pro- 
duced was of taking the Terasse by storm. 
From her leadership the Graf absorbed palpable 
courage. 

There was, of course, commotion ; good- 
natured laughter; subdued cheering from loyal 
Americans ready to top their joke of patriotism 
with a wink. Aldrich had time to calculate that 
probably not a dozen people among the several 
hundred watching her progress were not either 
ready to inquire after, or to explain, her identity. 
“Die Furman — Altistin! ” “Die Furman!” 
“Goes to Vienna.” “Some actress or other” 
“ Furman — Utica woman ” “ Tell you ’ bout it! ” 
“ Echte Amerikanerin! ” “ Die Furman! Frdu- 
lein Victoria!” 

Flake wise fluttered her name as in a drifting 
Babel. 

That a place had been preserved for them was 
evidenced by their unhesitant direction to some 

1 14 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


table toward the extreme end of the Terasse. 
Once seated there, only her huge plumes might 
be made out, nodding up to the sunlight now and 
then. Her back was to the crowd. 

As far as Aldrich could determine, the commo- 
tion at her appearance was, once more, stimulant 
and unifying rather than ridiculous and vulgar. 
It was like her. That justified it, he believed, for 
everybody. Yet he avoided his mother’s gaze. 
She turned upon him mercilessly. 

“ Do I understand — is that — Miss Furman ? ” 

“ There can never be any mistake where Miss 
Furman is concerned,” Aldrich attempted to reply 
with lightness. 

Mrs. Churchill-Aldrich concentrated on the 
Kellner who pushed through the throng with his 
burden held aloft : a very glistening silver bucket, 
out of which slanted a long-necked bottle. This 
waiter traced the exact route the two had taken. 
Out he wormed to the extreme end of the Terasse. 

Ere long the Graf caught the eye of Aldrich’s 
party. He called Miss Furman’s attention there- 
to. She turned in her seat, smiling brilliantly, 
and raised her glass in friendly greeting. 

“ The Graf is back,” said Cecilia. 

“ It would appear so,” replied Aldrich. 

To the rescue came Georgia. “ I heard Frau- 
lein Ackern speak of his being expected. He had 
115 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


some further business in Dresden and timed it 
for the Fourth.” 

“ If I mistake not, at Miss Whiteside’s own 
suggestion,” Aldrich jested. “ Oh, fie, ‘ Ce- 
cilia.’ ” 

But his thought was warm with gratitude to 
Georgia. “ How can one so free from taint or 
malice so intuitively divine it?” he wondered. 
For the instant, his passive loyalty became active 
affection. 

There were a thousand interests on the Terasse, 
and each of the party was quickly back at other 
diversions. The scene was unmarred enjoyment 
for all of them save Mrs. Churchill-Aldrich, who, 
from the beginning, had not quite found sympa- 
thy with it. The music was for the most part 
drowned out, she complained. She liked to be 
very still when she listened to music. She also 
fancied the glare from the river gave her a head- 
ache. Archibald foresaw the request she hero- 
ically put off making, and finally made it for her. 
Would she not like to go back to her hotel and 
lie down ? Mrs. Churchill- Aldrich agreed imme- 
diately. She thought, perhaps, she had better 
return to her room and rest awhile — if Archibald 
would be so good. He could return at once to 
Georgia and Cecilia; and meanwhile they had 
Herr Adolf. 

116 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Once off the Terasse, the mother addressed the 
son with decision. 

“ No cab,” she said. “ We will walk.” 

“ As you will, mother. But your head- 
ache ” 

“ Will be better when I have spoken. — Archi- 
bald ” 

“ Yes, mother.” 

“ You have desired that I meet and know this 
Victoria Furman.” 

He had broached the subject, with the utmost 
unconcern, as it had seemed to him, once or twice 
since his mother’s arrival. 

“ Why, certainly, mother. I didn’t see why it 
shouldn’t interest you to know her. But ” 

“ I do not wish to know her. I’ve seen her 
just now. I’ve watched her, studied her back, 
for the past twenty minutes. That is enough. 
Knowing her better might only destroy the se- 
curity of my perceptions, which are now perfectly 
clear. Archibald, if you ever marry that woman 
you will do so knowing that you break my 
heart” 

“ Good Heavens ! ” he cried. “ What has put 
such a scheme into your head ? ” 

“ Don’t require of me that I explain what may 
be the truer for being inexplicable. When you 
come to the parting of the ways this woman may 
ii 7 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


beckon, even from the further path. It is in her. 
To you she seems glorious ” 

He fairly gasped for breath. “ You’re more 
than wontedly cryptic, mother. I’m put to con- 
fessing my dullness.” 

“ Glorious to you — though you think yourself 
analytical and your analysis seems to refute the 
fact. Poor boy ! ” 

He shook his head. “ I feel rather that way, 
too,” he said, dolefully. “ Rather poor boy! 
She made me feel that way — now you do. It’s 
almost a scene ! ” 

No one may be more relentless than a mother. 
“ With men or women,” Mrs. Churchill-Aldrich 
went on, “ you will always be outmatched save 
when they are born to your own standard of in- 
tellect, your own concept of breeding. You’re of 
our race — as incapable of clearly getting the 
values in this Secessionism which attracts you as 
you’d be incapable of living up to them if you did. 
A New Englander, man or woman, is a true emo- 
tionalist — therefore, as forced to conservatism, to 
conventionality, as any dreaming sculptor was 
ever forced to marble. Emotionalism is fostered 
most in lives morally insulated. You’re of New 
England. Your life has been insulated for gen- 
erations before your birth. Poor boy ! ” 

“ Ah, me ! ” Aldrich wistfully hoped they at- 
118 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


tracted no attention from the people on the street 
who went by them in the one direction, and over- 
took them in the other as she talked. Mrs. 
Churchill-Aldrich was a slow walker, and a rapid 
speaker. Fortunately, she was blessed with a 
low, well-modulated voice. 

“If you should ever marry this woman I could 
never blame you. You’d do it self-consciously, 
feeling that you blazed new trails. You’d feel 
yourself a kind of hero of your adopted code. 
Still, I must beg my boy not to forget : it would 
break my heart. That would not be all. Even- 
tually it would break his own. And — you know, 
as I know — that it would break — yet another.” 

“ There, there, mother,” he protested in a sud- 
den panic. “ You must not think such things. 
You really must not. Here you’ve gone on build- 
ing a towering structure out of vapor — out of 
something I suppose you’d call your ‘ mother’s- 
divination.’ Everything you’ve thought out is 
ludicrously unthinkable. I’m going to ask you 
never to allude to this subject again.” 

Within him was a fear like unto a wound. It 
was deeper than irritation, and, beyond coward- 
ice, since cowardice may be estimated and met 
half-way. 


X 


IN WHICH GEORGIA READS LECONTE DE LISLE IN 
NEW YORK TOWN 

One early forenoon of a December day, with 
the Dresden Fourth some several months a mem- 
ory, Aldrich made his way along street Broadway 
of New York City, in the United States of Amer- 
ica. Just above Herald Square he encountered 
Cecilia Whiteside. In this there was nothing sur- 
prising. Cecilia had fallen into the way of being 
thus encountered. She doted on Fifth Avenue. 
Broadway was her deprecated territory for all 
hours. Since the fulfillment of her recent de- 
cision to take up again her forgotten country, 
Broadway and Fifth Avenue had been as rivets 
to her patriotism. The American display shop- 
windows were an endless wonder. The Ameri- 
can gowns dazed her into a kind of disapproving 
awe. It was not in her nature to soothe herself 
with reflections that much of everything was taw- 
dry, as she was sure Georgia did — though, to be 
sure, Georgia said nothing. Try as she would, 


120 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


the glitter, and the rush, and the fanfare, stunned 
her to humility which she combated and dissem- 
bled by main power. 

“ Fancy,” she cried, having seen Aldrich first. 
“ You on this dreadful street at this dreadful 
hour.” 

“ I seek protection,” Aldrich answered. 
“ Won't you accept the job? ” 

Persiflage was not for far, with Cecilia. She 
switched forthwith to the news that she had some- 
thing very wonderful in her muff. 

Aldrich had turned to walk along with her. He 
professed to be all curiosity, and Miss Whiteside 
drew it forth. “ I've been saving it for you,” she 
said. 

He perceived the object of mystery to be a 
newspaper folded and refolded to about the di- 
mensions of a compressed tube. 

“ I think I can guess that in advance,” said Al- 
drich. 

“ Really ? Have you seen it ? ” 

For reply he merely quoted : “ Victoria Fur- 
man another American winner ” 

“ Horrid, nicht wahr ? ” said Cecilia, who, since 
leaving Germany, was much given to the German 
she had scorned in the land where it is spoken. 
“ It reads as if your friend were a sort of race 
horse.” 


9 


121 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ That way of describing a woman may be fig- 
urative — rather than offensive. The article is 
like all the articles in all the Yellows — that’s all.” 

Cecilia shrugged. “ Ah, yes. Dear me. I sup- 
pose she must be getting along — else they 
wouldn’t be writing of her, one way or another.” 

“ You have it,” he subjoined. “ One is get- 
ting along when one is treated familiarly by every- 
body.” 

They had reached Cecilia’s present destination 
— a corner drug-store. Aldrich found himself 
gracefully dismissed by Miss Whiteside’s assur- 
ance that it had been nice to have him along, part 
of the way. Had he been sensitive, the manner 
in which Cecilia paid him such compliments might 
have gone roughly with his vanity. As it was, 
the amiable unconsciousness with which she made 
it plain that he didn’t count at all was indeed the 
most effective thing he could count to her credit. 

He bade her good-morning, asking to be re- 
membered to Georgia. Then he retraced his 
steps with briskness. At a news-stand he paused 
before the panoply of morning editions. He had 
assumed familiarity with the sheet Cecilia had 
saved for him. As a matter of fact, her dis- 
covery would have been a revelation but for an 
accident of his breakfast. The paper was one he 
prided himself on not being given to purchasing. 


122 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


He had caught a glimpse of the half-page por- 
trait, with the heralding label, while his neighbor 
at the hotel table read the other side of the page. 

It was a fact of self, with which Aldrich had 
to comfort himself that, until this moment, some 
shyness, some nameless delicacy, some old misgiv- 
ing, had restrained him from looking farther. 
Equally plain to him was the motive in his bare- 
faced subterfuging with Cecilia. If the notice 
were something he would mind, then Cecilia must 
be made to feel he didn’t mind, while the thing 
was yet simple through his not knowing what he 
had to mind. By thus stating it for himself, he 
made a joke of it — a lonely joke, which brought 
a lonelier smile to his face. Here he handed 
over the necessary penny and secured his paper. 
Indeed, the humor of it was all that might down 
a humiliation for the disloyalty, almost the be- 
trayal, in the fact that he had been afraid. To 
believe in Miss Furman was become a point in 
his code; the more especially since as an episode 
she appeared closed in his life. Human nature 
is prone to hallow that which it has renounced. 

Following that Fourth of July on the Dres- 
dener Terasse, he had seen the prospective opera- 
singer just once before her departure for the Ost- 
see with Fraulein Ackern. The departure had 
preceded his own mother’s midsummer trip down 
123 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


into reeking Italy. He had dutifully accompanied 
her, and his last call at the Ackern villa had been 
hurried. Miss Furman herself had given it the air 
of being something perfunctory, which Heaven 
might witness he had not meant it should be. 

“You won’t forbid my writing some time?” 
he had asked her. 

“ Not when I’ve sent you my Viennese ad- 
dress,” she had replied. “ You see, I can’t give 
it to you now, because I haven’t any yet.” 

This had been rather bad, inasmuch as a letter 
addressed to the K. K. Hofoperntheater at Wein 
would have to reach her. There was, of course, 
nothing to do but to accept the decision either as a 
clear refusal or a half-promise of possible per- 
mission later. The chances were about equal 
either way. 

Thus had the acquaintance closed. He could 
not even call it friendship. And his mother had 
been on the verge of hysteria that it might de- 
velop into matrimony. The final call at the Ack- 
ern villa reproached his conscience with evidence 
pointing the colossal maternal egotism of which 
he had been the object. Remorse may act by 
proxy. A man may be more put to blush as an 
unwilling instigation than as a direct accountant. 

Fraulein Ackern’s presence throughout the call 
had furnished the innocent note to throw Miss 


124 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Furman’s abeyance into contrast. Wholesouledly 
Fraulein Ackern had admonished him to “ write 
to us at the Ost-see one-time,” even to come up 
one-time and see them before he should sail for 
home. But Fraulein Ackern, good woman that 
she was, had not the precise outlook for compre- 
hending the kink in her sanction. A woman of 
Miss Furman’s type readily submits herself to 
an authority to which she sets unsuspected limits. 
Aldrich had not gone to the Ost-see. And thus 
far, he had had no line from Fraulein Furman, 
long ere this a singer of the Royal Opera at 
Vienna. 

Having selected his penny yellow, here in far 
New York, Aldrich bolted into the first bar-room 
that promised a table. Ordering a horse’s-neck 
as an excuse, he read the notice as many times 
as he wished, in comparative seclusion. The bar- 
room was athrong with the first male vintage of 
New York’s delinquent morning, but Aldrich kept 
his circular table of marble intact, belading one 
of its three seats with his coat, another with his 
hat and cane, and the final chair with himself. 
His privacy was respected. 

From “ Victoria Furman Another American 
Winner,” it appeared that one Victoria Furman, 
a Utica girl, had been bidden to sing before the 
Emperor at a Hof concert in the palace. The 

125 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Emperor had especially complimented her and 
had presented her with a beautiful bracelet. The 
whole account, whatever might be its accuracy, 
was, of course, as misleading as possible. The 
average purchaser of a penny yellow would 
hardly know that any member of the Royal Opera 
at Vienna was sure to be invited, in due time, to 
sing at some Hof concert at the palace. The 
average customer would also fail to appreciate 
how immemorial custom demanded a gift of some 
jewel in lieu of a perquisite of cash, for anyone 
who did anything musical before an Emperor of 
Austria. What Aldrich did find interesting was 
the fact that New York press-work was being 
clone. That struck him as significant. Taken 
either way, Miss Furman was evidently for- 
warding her career with a propitious outlook 
from somewhere: possibly, even, from New 
York's Metropolitan, which aimed at scouring 
the heavens with a long telescope. 

His loneliness deepened to the feeling of one 
left behind. There swept over him a desire to 
go direct to Georgia. Georgia’s presence in New 
York this winter had proved, on the whole, a 
boon, unequaled since that long-ago summer when 
she had been little short of a revelation. He 
liked to accuse her of having always helped him 
to a more graceful, if more absorbed, interest in 
126 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


himself. There was generally some woman to 
assist a man to that sort of thing, with conditions 
attached. But Georgia had set about it funda- 
mentally and without proviso, from the very start. 
These last months had brought him freakish 
turns of wondering whether Georgia were not 
necessary to him: wondering if indeed he were 
quite imaginable without her. She rather en- 
hanced the speculation by the circumstance that 
she had always managed to keep herself delight- 
fully imaginable without him. She had never 
made it possible for him to do otherwise than 
ignore any dim allusions of relatives and friends 
to the contrary. Whatever might be the name- 
less conviction of his mother, for instance — his 
mother with her typical mother’s scent for infat- 
uations toward her son — it had never shaken his 
own! (Or as far as he was aware, it had not.) 
There was not the slightest opportunity for doubt- 
ing Georgia’s depersonalization as far as he was 
concerned. On the contrary, he often found him- 
self conjecturing Georgia as one who might cher- 
ish somewhere a dead love, locked within mem- 
ories of her girlhood : some amulet shielding the 
heart; redolent of vanished throbs in its mystic 
protection. Far more reconcilable with Geor- 
gia was such a supposition. 

In a haste at outs with his usual leisureliness, 


127 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Aldrich hurried through his noon engagement 
with his publisher. He had decided not to resist 
his desire to storm Georgia for luncheon. He 
found her at home. As always, she was glad to 
see him. 

“ I saved something for you,” she cried, gaily, 
and held out a newspaper. 

“ While it is very much like several others pre- 
sented to me this morning,” he said, “ I suppose 
it only goes to prove one can’t have too many.” 

Georgia was amused, but she accepted his dis- 
missal of the topic. The attractiveness of her 
quarters burst upon him afresh, as he relaxed him- 
self in a Morris-chair and consigned the fated 
yellow to a by-standing waste-basket. Every 
nook and cranny of the room had its suggestive- 
ness of comfort or beauty. 

Miss Low was living in that counterpart of the 
European Pension stigmatized in New York, and 
hopelessly, as the “ boarding-house.” In the pres- 
ent instance it was at all events a boarding-house 
superlatively excellent. Nothing betrayed its 
identity as such. From the polished flooring, old 
tapestry, and open fire-place in the square en- 
trance hall, to the taste of such rooms as might 
(on rare occasions) be glimpsed through open 
doorways on the upper floors, every detail was 
emphatic. In point of fact, it was a private resi- 
128 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


dence not yet vitiated by the commercial use into 
which it had been forced. 

Its subversion, indeed, accounted for Miss 
Low’s presence in New York at this time. The 
proprietress was a friend of college days with 
whom, through the years, Georgia had kept up a 
desultory correspondence. Misfortune had over- 
taken this friend the winter before. Her hus- 
band, an architect of apparent prosperity, had 
died, and Georgia in Dresden had been soul- 
wrung with a more than ordinary profusion of 
black-rimmed envelopes. The deceased architect 
had, it appeared, been something of a dreamer. 
He had left a light life insurance and this house, 
with its circumspect, well-considered luxury, 
heavily mortgaged. Georgia’s suggestion had 
sanctioned the widow’s determination to fill her 
dwelling co-operatively from a wide range of 
friendships. 

The co-operation would consist in the exchange 
of the quality of a refined home, without its re- 
sponsibility, for prices commensurate enough to 
make the thing work. It hadn’t worked quite as 
the widow had hoped. The quality-of-home side 
of it was satisfactory to legions willing to put it 
to the test, yet the widow had found herself put 
to embarrassment at some flaw in the arrange- 
ment somewhere. One letter in particular had 
129 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


struck Georgia as especially pathetic: upon this 
unaccustomed landlady was dawning the convic- 
tion that she must lower her prices, for friend- 
ship’s sake, to certain friends of long standing 
(and financial prosperity) who found them too 
high. 

The letter asking Georgia’s advice about this 
had reached her early in the fall, and was, per- 
haps, the straw weighing the balance of her de- 
cision to visit America for a few months. She 
saw her power of being helpful; and what else 
could she excusably live for, if not for her 
friends, when opportunity made her needful? 
Thus had she journeyed to New York to become 
the “ pivotal point,” as she humorously expressed 
it, in Mrs. Morton’s household. Under the cir- 
cumstances a pivotal point could work wonders. 
The phrase proved no misnomer. For her two 
rooms Georgia fixed a rate which was a manifest 
consideration of value received: not exorbitant, 
but just. Something in the influence of her grati- 
tude for the privilege of doing it actually gave 
backbone to the entire arrangement, including 
Mrs. Morton herself, who gained courage in 
keeping up her prices. (“ Gret ” Morton, they 
had always called her at school. And always she 
had been as now : efficient, systematic, fragile, un- 
business-like. The combination is more frequent 
130 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


than generally supposed, and incompetency may 
fatten on its greed while efficiency languishes in 
its timidity.) 

As for Cecilia, she had found Mrs. Morton’s 
terms exorbitant, like everything else in America. 
Feeling compelled, albeit reluctantly, to forego 
her habit of selecting an apartment under the 
same roof with Georgia, she had had the great 
good fortune to find rooms in the first house be- 
yond. They cost less, and she was so easily 
Georgia’s guest at all times, that she lost none of 
the old feeling of being under her dispensation. 

Aldrich had returned with his mother toward 
the end of August. He had planned his winter 
largely for Boston, but found it too difficult to 
resist New York when he learned how Georgia 
was to be added to the already alluring combina- 
tion of his publisher and the opera. He was in 
the city now, on an indefinite stay, having come 
to the point of relinquishing his Boston apart- 
ments. He wasn’t sure he should want them 
again. 

As he relaxed himself in Georgia’s Morris-chair 
before her fireside this noon, he was very certain 
he should never want them again. Georgia 
would have liked to draw him out on the subject 
of the play he was writing, but he dismissed her 
inquiry with the assurance that, like everything 

131 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


he did, it threatened to be so clever it would be 
stupid. He preferred to dwell upon the attrac- 
tiveness of the sitting-room — her sitting-room — 
in which he was finding such comfort, such repose 
of soul. 

“ This is the sort of thing they don’t do a bit 
better in Europe,” he said, referring to the essen- 
tially American charm of the furnishings. “ Over 
there they don’t know much about the open fire 
and they don’t know as much as they might about 
polished and grained woodwork, unstained by age. 
They deluge you with sofas, but they don’t know 
anything of these lounging seats with their ten- 
thousand cushions. They’d have a table, set rec- 
tangularly before every one of them. There are 
some things on this side that they don’t seem to 
get at on the other — at least, not in their lodging- 
houses.” 

Miss Low laughed. “If they did, you know, 
it would quite spoil Europe by giving us no Amer- 
ica to look back to.” 

“ I wonder,” he mused, “ if you haven’t hit a 
secret of Europe’s enthralment. We do look 
back to America over there.” 

“ And eventually we come back to America, 
where we long for Europe.” Miss Low’s mild 
blue eyes were alight above a little sigh — con- 
fessed homesickness. 


132 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ Just about now,” he ruminated, “ they’re 
having the seven o’clock supper at the Pension 
Schramm. Frau Schramm, the elder, is telling 
of the time when, being a pastor’s daughter, she 
was given a booth at an orphans’ bazaar; and of 
how the Crown Princess Louise, or Elizabeth, or 
Olga, or Stephanie — who was it, anyway ? — came 
up and chatted very graciously and wanted to 
know all about the orphans.” 

“ Oh, the meal is much farther on,” smiled 
Georgia. “ You see it’s nearly lunch-time in New 
York: tea-time must be about over at the Pen- 
sion in Blasewitz. Ere this, Frau bewidowed 
Schramm, the younger, has gotten to the time the 
Queen of Saxony stopped and asked after Katy- 
chen, in the anteroom of the hospital, when 
Katychen had the scarlatina there.” 

“ How they loved it,” said Aldrich. “ It didn’t 
seem to spoil it at all that at the hospital the 
Queen seems to have had a habit of asking after 
everybody.” 

He looked dreamily into the fire. 

“ I should like to hear that ‘ gesegnete Mahl- 
zeit ’ pronounced after their pretty post-mortem 
blessing, when everybody gets up and shakes 
hands. I should like to brandish rapiers with 
Katychen on the finer details of ethics and human 
nature. I should like to watch Cecilia wander 


133 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


out after mealtime toward a summerhouse, thus 
putting it distinctly to Herr Adolf to wander out 
after her. I should even like to see Herr Adolf 
himself, with his London cravat, and Saxon lisp 
on the broad British ‘ a ’ ” 

Aldrich interrupted himself suddenly, sitting 
bolt upright. “ Do you know, Georgia — I some- 
times had a notion that Herr Adolf, being quite 
appropriated by Cecilia, might end by proposing 
to you. It wouldn’t have been unlike the way 
such things go sometimes.” 

Georgia’s ringing peal of laughter came too 
late to overtake her flush. The flush was of a 
more or less tell-tale quality. Aldrich leaned for- 
ward as if to scan at some close range the nail 
he had so fortuitously hit on the head. 

“ I see,” he said at length. “ It happened! 
Why didn’t you tell me ? ” 

Georgia hesitated. “ Let us not talk of it. It 
was too absurd to ever seem funny until this 
moment.” 

“ Did Cecilia know of it? ” 

“ It was certainly too absurd to tell Ce- 
cilia.” 

“ That’s so,” he reflected. “ She might have 
taken it seriously. She might have turned on 
us.” 

Miss Low had subsided in her gentle derision. 

134 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ As I’ve often told you,” she began, “ you don’t 
do Cecilia justice. Cecilia does very well with 
her intuitions, sometimes.” 

“ And this time? ” 

“ Well, after — after his silly mistake, Herr 
Adolf quite dropped me ” 

“ You mean he was given to understand he 
must ! ” 

“ By no means. I didn’t mind him. But he 
was more attentive to Cecilia than ever — after- 
ward — yet she lost all interest — though she had 
no way of knowing, surely.” 

Aldrich admitted that Cecilia was in America, 
now, their next-door neighbor, and that she didn’t 
appear to be pining for Herr Adolf. He could 
not, however, recover from the surprise of the 
revelation — the comical fortuity of his arrival at 
it ! 

“ So he did propose ! Herr Adolf did venture 
with the more than inaccessible Fraulein Low. 
And though I somehow had thought it out, still 
it never would have occurred to me. Never, 
never, never.” 

Thus he ran on, fondling his discovery like a 
plaything. There was an earnest side to it, too. 
He could recall a respectable aggregate of points 
in Herr Adolf’s favor: comfortable success in 
business, reasonably good looks, excellent groom- 

135 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


ing, indestructible amiability of nature — all these 
things had yet left him a mere ridiculous occur- 
rence in Georgia’s memory: an episode to be 
brushed aside as conferring the reverse of dis- 
tinction. Words of his mother or of one of his 
sisters came back to him. “ Georgia Low might 
often have married, and well.” He could see 
dimly the succession of havens. Other women 
would have guided grateful sails to such moor- 
ings. Did Georgia look backward to some far 
receding horizon while she kept the open sea? 
Or was her gaze bent forward to the realities of 
the mind — or was it fixed on the stars with their 
symbolisms so imperfect save in the severing 
which some called loneliness ? 

She still sat as he had found her on entering : 
at her writing desk. Against it she partially sup- 
ported herself with her right forearm, while her 
fingers toyed with a paper knife. Still spread 
open before her was an uncut Revue des Deux 
Mondes. The crispness of her embroidered 
linen gown brought out the delicacy which seemed 
to emanate tapering from her finger-tips, on, into 
the little steel prong of the paper cutter. It was 
as though she exhaled an aroma of exquisite im- 
palpability which condensed to a slim current — 
out into a metal point. He had his fantastic no- 
tion that the fineness of her quality, thus pro- 
136 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


jected, pricked him, like a goad, to its keener 
appreciation. 

He wondered if there could be some conscious- 
ness in her of the appeal, which thus became the 
power, of her enigma. Was it through this 
power that she assumed seniority in cases like that 
of Miss Whiteside, who, for the most part, looked 
some older, and was, in all likelihood, considerably 
so ? The notion was dismissed hard upon its incep- 
tion. Candidly thought out, there was the brutal 
but unescapable fact that we are always older 
than our inferiors. If sincere with ourselves, 
we could but live up to it. And he felt nothing 
but loyalty in his resultant admission that were 
the cases exactly reversed, say between himself 
and Georgia, she would still be older than he. 
Moreover, she was no older than she’d ever been. 
And she had never been too much so. 

“I wish you’d read me something,” he said; 
“ something in French, say. To tell you the 
truth, I’m on the point of having a fit of the 
blues.” 

She admitted that being “ blue ” was a phase 
she had thought him beyond admitting. 

“ I don’t know what it all is,” he confessed. 
“ Maybe it’s my play. Or maybe it’s the way 
these translations, done by contract, are getting 
on my nerves. Maybe it’s the singular density 
137 


10 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


with which the reviews have failed in getting that 
last little book of mine — those verses, which may- 
be pretty bad, but might be Sanskrit or Thibetan 
for any insight any critic shows into their inten- 
tion, even their ground plan. Maybe ” 

“ Well, you know you were always a Secession- 
ist, she interrupted, softly. 

“ And it’s very dangerous for an emotional 
American to be that,” he assented. “ Or, at least 
— so has my mother told me. Exactly. And I 
was going to say that it may be just New York 
that is the matter with us.” He pluralized, in- 
voluntarily. “ Hasn’t it been said, somewhere, 
that New York gets to be the matter with every- 
body?” 

Again her laugh had the sigh in it. 

“ It’s surely New York,” he went on. “ New 
York does things to you.” 

“ I’m afraid,” she said, “ it’s not New York so 
much as this America we don’t any more quite 
belong to.” 

“ And it’s because we’re such superlatively 
good Americans that we don’t,” he superadded, 
whimsically. “ We’re so Americanly ready to 
take on any new thing — from a foreignism to a 
storage automobile. We’ve expatriated ourselves 
from our fair land through being overtypical of 
our great country.” 


138 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ Are you comforted ? ” she inquired, and arose 
and stood before him, and looked down upon 
him with the tenderness her impulse allowed her, 
as a thing too true to be dissembled. “ What 
shall I read? You know, you’ve asked me to.” 

He had merely to extend his hand to take from 
the revolving bookcase the volume which he gave 
her, silently. She began the cadence of the 
French, her voice half droning the measures 
until they were blent in seismic swing, as if 
chanted. The spirit of French utterance was 
hers. The monotone was depersonalizing. She 
glided out upon it, and toward him, like reverie, 
reshaping that fine impalpability which ceaselessly 
passed from her to the little things she did ; airily 
fashioning the greater things he sometimes felt, 
at such moments, she might have done. 

Something, too, was added from the surging 
musical isolation of this Leconte de Lisle, whom 
they both loved. 

“Mais si rien ne repond dans l’immense etendue 
Que le sterile echo de l’eternel desir, 

Adieu, deserts, ou Tame ouvre une aile eperdue! 
Adieu, songe sublime, impossible a saisir!” 

She read no farther. She glanced toward him 
as he sat, lost in the rhythms with the hunched 
shoulders of his boyhood, and his feet against the 
139 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


fender before him. Her pause was for a mo- 
ment’s respite to her voice. But in the instant of 
its silence there arose from the lower hall the 
muffled sound of the Oriental gong, suggestive and 
mysterious like some of the lines she had intoned. 
With the minimum of rudeness, it brought her 
back to refuge in the commonplace. 

“ That means luncheon,” she explained. “ I 
know you must be awfully hungry. I am.” 

She closed the book, inserting as she did so 
the slim steel of the paper-cutter to mark the 
place. 


XI 


VEERING TO VICTORIA, WHO FINDS A COMPATRIOT, 
WITH CAVIAR AND A HALF-LITER 

When Miss Furman had returned with Frau- 
lein Ackern from their outing on the Ost-see, she 
had stopped a day in Dresden, which was on the 
direct route to Vienna. Fraulein Ackern’s health 
was none too brilliant, and, beset with growing 
horror of the loneliness which would follow Vic- 
toria’s departure, she had about decided to close 
the villa for awhile and become a temporary wan- 
derer. With the restlessness sometimes inci- 
dental to forethought, she planned Carlsbad, the 
Tyrol, even such wide radii as the Riviera, cir- 
cumscribing between-times she meant to allow 
herself in Vienna. A certain fever of resignation 
kept her at schemes for journeys in which she 
had but a mechanical interest. 

Victoria did not neglect to remonstrate that 
“ Schwesterlein ” might just as well pull up stakes 
for good and all in Dresden and settle, with her, 
permanently, in the Kaiserstadt. The argument 
may have lured; it was assuredly fruitless. Not 
141 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


for an instant did Fraulein Ackern appear to be 
considering anything beyond occasional visits. 
Whether from an underlying attachment to Blase- 
witz, and her home there, or from fanatic con- 
sistence to her idea of sacrifice in yielding her Vic- 
toria to the detached world of a career, she ap- 
peared to regard the time of her active participa- 
tion in Victoria’s destiny as irrevocably closed. 
Victoria did not too strongly press the point. Just 
why not, she could not have explained to herself. 
Nor could her conscience quite escape a dim feel- 
ing that by exerting her faculty of persuasion to 
the utmost she might induce Fraulein Ackern to 
remain with her at least the greater part of the 
time. That Fraulein Ackern would be much less 
lonely, with her, than anywhere else, her utmost 
modesty did not admit of doubting, but it seemed 
to suffice that the thing be kept clearly above- 
board. She had made plain to Fraulein Ackern 
her sincere readiness to keep up the relation, so 
like and unlike that of a mother and daughter. 
She had pointed out how, as far as their friend- 
ship was concerned, Vienna need only be a sort of 
enlarged and removed Blasewitz. There was no 
reason why the footing should alter, save in cer- 
tain details of her financial independence which 
could only simplify it. 

But to all these expressions of Victoria’s will- 
142 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


ingness, even desire, Fraulein Ackern appeared 
to see no possibility of assent. Her passive, pen- 
sive demurral bewildered Victoria, who was quite 
too loyal, too grateful, you might say, to let it 
irritate her. There was nothing left then, as Vic- 
toria looked at it. She must go her way, leaving 
Fraulein Ackern to her self-conceived duty of let- 
ting it come to pass. 

The contract required that Victoria be in 
Vienna the last week of August. She had 
thought to take her leave of her benefactress at 
the Ost-see, and had earnestly advised Fraulein 
Ackern to remain there until the September cool- 
ness. Fraulein Ackern was undoubtedly much 
run down and needed far more building up. Vic- 
toria found it cruel that she could not stay with 
her to see it done. At any rate, she remonstrated 
soundly against having to drag her away from it; 
and Fraulein Ackern had been almost persuaded 
as to that point. Being high-German, however 
(that was to say, quite incalculable), she took one 
of her obdurate stands on the day before Victo- 
ria’s departure and insisted on going back with 
her as far as Dresden, that she might begin at 
once the preparations for a long closing of the 
villa. 

That day in Dresden was a horror to Vic- 
toria, which she was convinced she ideally con- 
143 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


cealed by being more than wontedly cheerful 
and affectionate. The pristine glow of her sense 
of what she owed Fraulein Ackern would have 
moved her to even more heroic efforts, had neces- 
sity demanded. But spontaneity, good cheer, and 
demonstrativeness were tried successful courses, 
which she had well in hand. She could operate 
them as she operated her cadenzas — even when 
they bored her. Also, to do her justice, she was 
just enough at recognizing the psychological mo- 
ment when she had no right to be bored. The 
right to be bored is a luxury exclusive to the for- 
tunate who may allow themselves that, or any 
other form of entertainment. Which is to say, 
that to the bored struggler, the right to be bored 
is forbidden. 

Fraulein Ackern went with Victoria through 
the various rooms of the villa. On her protegee 
she had imposed a final task significant of her own 
devotion — and a corresponding trial to Victoria's. 
She had desired that Victoria should select any- 
thing from the furnishings — rugs, pictures, or 
bric-a-brac — that might most appeal to her to 
make habitable her new home which, part the 
time, would be Fraulein Ackern's home as well, 
in Vienna. The generosity was, for various rea- 
sons, a great embarrassment, but Victoria 
couldn't just see any way out of it. In reality, it 
144 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


would have been good to her to be able to go to 
Vienna with the same freedom of cumbrous lug- 
gage with which she had come to Dresden. Re- 
freshing to her was a clear sense of pulling up 
stakes. 

During that first luckless three of her years in 
Europe she had accumulated debts which in the 
aggregate would make a serious inroad on her 
first year’s earnings. She had no definite idea 
just what the expense of a Royal Opera singer 
in Vienna might be. Her minimum first year’s 
salary was to be ten thousand gulden. Big as 
it had seemed, from some aspects, she couldn’t 
forget that it was about the amount received by 
Jean De Reszke for one or two single perform- 
ances in New York. It might take her more than 
a year to get those debts paid off. With a sigh 
of compunction, she wished she might picture 
Fraulein Ackern as extending her assistance, not 
in house furnishings, but in the form of a check, 
neatly calculated to just about the amount. Of 
their existence the older woman was aware. In 
the long hours of perfect confidence and sympa- 
thetic communion, Victoria had divulged them to 
her, along with the rest of her history. But in 
such matters Fraulein Ackern was solidified to 
a more than inconvenient misconception, which 
Victoria felt she must live up to, though the 
145 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Heavens fell. Fraulein Ackern was sincerely 
convinced that it was matter of pride with Vic- 
toria to pay her own debts with her own efforts, 
as opportunity should come. 

To tamper with such conviction would be a 
delicate, if not a risky, thing. The matter of 
pride lay, as far as Victoria was concerned, in 
keeping it undeflected. In doing this she felt she 
balanced accounts. Her conscience was atoned. 
It was surely as creditable to live up to a thing, 
as to live it out; particularly when living up to 
it compelled you, also, to live it out ! 

She chose from Fraulein Ackern’s effects with 
tact and determination. Again it was a difficult 
task. Nominally, she was merely “ borrowing ” 
them. Yet she felt compunction where (as not 
infrequently) her personal taste intruded upon 
her ready perception of what Fraulein Ackern 
felt a sentiment about having her possess. There 
was also a feeling that, under the circumstances, 
it would be in as faulty taste to choose what was 
of too little value as what was of too much; and 
equally as mistaken to select too few things as to 
select too many. On the whole, the sentiment 
method seemed the safest. As the two women 
passed slowly about, from room to room, she be- 
trayed this principle of guidance in a rather pretty 
way, remarking to Fraulein Ackern: 

146 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ I should like to have just the things you’d 
enjoy seeing over again when you’re with me, 
and hate to see here when you come back to the 
house without me in it.” 

“ Then one-time will you must to take the villa 
balcony,” returned Fraulein Ackern. “ I shall 
most hate to see that when you are far.” 

“ I shall dream of that balcony at tea-time,” 
supplemented Victoria, “ or when the moon comes 
up. Too bad there has to be anything else but 
tea-times, and moons coming up ! ” 

The older woman did not smile as Victoria had 
meant she should. She had sunk into a chair, 
and gazed ahead with the familiar look which (in 
Victoria’s private interpretation) always appeared 
to await something with a resigned certainty of 
its never happening. It relieved Victoria to re- 
call that the look had always been there more or 
less. It had not been a development since their 
friendship : which friendship was but the most re- 
cent instance of Fraulein Ackern’s peculiar fac- 
ulty for great devotion. The conviction was 
brought home to Victoria that this faculty for 
great devotion did not pay. It had been brought 
home before, but it swept over her anew. It was 
like a revelation in Fraulein Ackern’s eyes, on 
this most excessive day of a too protracted leave- 
taking. 


147 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


In some way or other, however, she did get 
herself off on the night train for Vienna, which 
she insisted was the best for her purpose. It was 
a tiresome, dirty run, and she could “ bluff the 
thing out ,” getting herself asleep through it, she 
said. 

In Vienna, her temporary lodgment had been 
arranged for at the well-known “ American Pen- 
sion ” of Frau Heincke. Here Victoria had 
planned a stay until she should find a suitable un- 
furnished apartment, after which the things 
would be sent on from the Ackern villa. 

When Victoria found herself easy in her new 
quarters on the morning of her arrival, it seemed 
so good to draw free breath in the huge room re- 
served in her honor that she decided to be as long 
about finding the unfurnished apartment as possi- 
ble. With the good fortune of a little ill-luck in 
the matter, she might even keep it off all winter, 
she thought. If Fraulein Ackern came to see her 
there would be a good room and all the comforts 
at the Pension Heincke; and Frau Heincke 
seemed the most excellent sort in the world. 

On this first day, meals were served to “ Miss ” 
Furman — the new landlady was eager in her em- 
phasis of the Miss — in her room, but from time 
to time Frau Heincke knocked at the door to in- 
quire in English if Miss Furman “ wanted any- 
148 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


thing.” On one or two of these occasions Vic- 
toria permitted her to come in, and open out. 
Since it appeared inevitable that Frau Heincke 
would open out a great deal, Victoria saw the 
expediency of letting her begin, on the one hand; 
on the other, she found it diverting to lie, kimo- 
no-clad, and listen. 

The new Hausfrau was a Viennese differing 
essentially from Victoria’s Saxon conception of 
the species. In looks she might be an enlarged 
Briinnhilde, though no more enlarged than Vic- 
toria had seen, with her own eyes, puffing through 
steam-engine scenes of the “ Gotterdammerung.” 
To call her the Briinnhilde type would be to say 
that her regularity of feature and outline had the 
peculiar effect of heightening her massiveness, 
which was fairly overpowering until the gradual 
vision grew accustomed. It had seemed to Vic- 
toria, at first sight of her, that she must weigh 
three hundred reasonably well distributed pounds. 
Subsequently she reduced the conjecture by fifties 
until it reached a stationary scientific two hun- 
dred, which Victoria deemed provisional and 
moderate. 

The new Hausfrau’s first innings came about 
when she introduced herself at the door, person- 
ally conducting a tray with caviar and cham- 
pagne. She had arranged this collation as a fes- 
149 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


tival of one, of which Victoria should partake 
in honor of her own arrival. 

“ Mercy ! ” cried Victoria. 

“ Please beautifully! Bitte schon!” Frau 
Heincke smiled downward from the high voice 
on the first word to the deep contralto of the 
final syllable. 

“ And you mean for me to lie on this divan and 
make way with that — an hour before luncheon ! — 
and while you look on?” 

“ You will to be just like my daughter,” ex- 
plained Frau Heincke, “ and so you must eat it, 
because you will to be just like my odder daugh- 
ter who have act on the stage in Buchsenhimmel, 
in Baiern. ,, 

Apart from its grammatical irregularity, Frau 
Heincke’s English was so really American, with 
a pleasant familiar flatness of accent, that Vic- 
toria exclaimed at it in astonishment. “ I no- 
ticed it at the very first,” she said. “ You talk 
almost like a good Yankee. Where did you get 
it? ” 

“ Aber I am American,” exclaimed Frau 
Heincke, swelling with pride. “ My fader and 
mudder journeyed to New York to become natu- 
ralized, and I was born Amerikaner. But they 
did not like it, and got so foolish to get home- 
sick, and come back to Vienna, when I was only 

150 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


six months old — and here have I roost, alas 
God! ” 

Victoria had her unspoken doubts as to 
whether this cherished nationality had contrib- 
uted materially toward Frau Heincke’s good 
United States vowels. The “ American Pen- 
sion, ” now in its twentieth year of her proprie- 
torship, might account for that. The nationality 
they shared in common, however, was enough 
ground for repeating her insistence that Frau 
Heincke ring for another glass. They must 
drink a little toast together to their Amerika, she 
reasoned with a persuasion that took acceptance 
for granted and amply charmed the Hausfrau in 
the case. 

Thereupon the latter fetched another glass and 
propped pillows behind Victoria’s back until she 
resembled a Byzantine picture set in mosaic. 
Then she shared the half-liter of rather warm 
champagne, standing a little to one side in a glow- 
ing assertiveness of self-effacement. 

To Frau Heincke’s mind it was a magnificent 
outset toward the intimate friendship which, self- 
evidently, must accrue between a Hausfrau of 
her own prestige and a star boarder preor- 
dained as a local celebrity. She made the most 
of it. The odder daughter to whom she had 
alluded was, as appeared from her conversation, 
I5i 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


an actual daughter of the blood. Her name was 
Tilly. She was Frau Heincke’s oldest child, the 
favorite of Frau Heincke’s discarded husband, 
and she played beautiful roles at the Stadt-theater 
in Buchsenhimmel : “ Magda,” “ Rautendelein,” 
“ Maria Stuart,” “ Fanchon the Cricket,” “ Lady 
Macbeth.” The Tilly cherished an ambition, 
hardly more than a dream, of maybe some day 
being versatile enough to play in the Volksthea- 
ter in Vienna. And that was the dramatic com- 
plement of the K. K. Hofoperntheater, where 
Miss Furman sang. 

“ But that will take a long time yet, even if 
she can do it never,” sighed Frau Heincke. 
“ Very few are so happy as the Fraulein Miss 
Furman, to get so high at the beginning, already.” 

Victoria protested that it was much easier when 
one sang. The voice just did it for you. It wasn’t 
as if you had to act your way up to it. “If 
they’d made me wait until I learned to act ! ” she 
exclaimed, and dropped her head back among the 
cushions at the thought. Sincere was her con- 
viction that nothing could quite express the hope- 
lessness of their having waited until she learned 
to act. That much had the Lubke drilled into 
her, thoroughly. 


XII 


KEEPING TO VICTORIA, WHO WILL LIVE UP TO 
WHAT SHE MUST LIVE OUT 

Frau Heincke was to favor Victoria with 
many more calls after this propitious and intro- 
ductory one. They were, moreover, to be re- 
plete with enlightenment concerning the Viennese 
point of view (as seen by a Hausfrau), and 
varied with details of gossip from a twenty-year 
Viennese-American supply. But, aside from 
these little enlivenments, Victoria's first days in 
Vienna were more than ordinarily colorless. Her 
opening role of mother in “ Hansel und Gretel ” 
furnished small excitement, coming, as it did, in 
warm weather, with no one back, and the opera 
two-thirds empty. She had not yet even met the 
Direktor. He had been down in Italy at the time 
of her Gastrolle in the spring. His telegram to 
the assistant Direktor, his deputy, who had 
mailed him an official account of her qualifica- 
tions and success (vouched for by the Graf von 
Liidersberg) had been informal: Engage at 

153 


11 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


once — “ Gleich engagiern ” — nothing more. 
Thus far, had this been the sum and substance 
of the cautious rumor, linking, with gloved fin- 
gers, her name with that of the Graf. It re- 
mained, then, as she frankly comprehended, 
“ up to her ” to make more of the rumor, or to 
leave it to unmake itself, as her American con- 
science might dictate or her artistic diplomacy 
see fit. 

The Graf was now out of town. The Ameri- 
can conscience held, for the nonce, a full hand, 
in point of circumstance, as well as inclina- 
tion. Victoria met aH the good Americans 
at the Pension, on the second day, at dinner. 
There were doctors studying nameless bacilli at 
the hospitals, and students, with two or three de- 
grees already, working out a thesis, at the Uni- 
versity, less it sometimes appeared, for the ad- 
vancement of the actual cause of learning, than 
to get another. Among the ladies were pianists 
studying with a nameful Pole (whose pupils had 
added syllables for him), or studying with his 
corps of assistant teachers, in the hope of some 
day getting to him, much like the hope of a soul 
in Purgatory for God. And there were singers, 
and 'cellists, and violinists, studying at the Con- 
servatory, There appeared to be no male music 
students at the Pension Heincke, and Victoria 
154 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


had to reason out why it was so. She decided 
that it must be because the Pension was expen- 
sive. When a man studied music, professionally, 
he was for some reason almost invariably poor. 
When the Muses favored poverty they seemed to 
prefer it in masculine guises. 

Victoria had to remember that she had been 
an exception — then had her misgivings as to 
whether the Muses had ever really wooed her. 

The Lubke never got cross without assuring 
her they had not. But she had the voice, and on 
the glory of it the Lubke had no will but to con- 
tinue her free instruction. That was the pleas- 
ant refrain to which she could always return. 
On the strength of it she had, in the long run, 
practically ruled the Lubke, by occasional inti- 
mations that she might some day give up sing- 
ing if she found herself “ too dull for it.” On 
the strength of it, too, or of the real or imag- 
inary position it had brought her, all the Ameri- 
can feminine contingent at the Pension deluged 
her with calls. To one more sensitive and less 
good-natured than Victoria these calls would 
have been an irritation, so self-conscious was 
their attempt at concealing an exaggeration of 
her importance with an offhand matter-of- 
courseness. That awed deference which may 
not quite account for itself, likes to disguise it- 
155 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


self, playing at easy familiarity. Victoria’s call- 
ers were, all of them, rather awkwardly hail- 
fellow-well-met. When Victoria began to observe 
this she had a synchronous conjecture at an odd 
tangent, touching a half-forgotten friend of the 
summer, one Mr. Aldrich. If he had been there, 
that nice and good-looking fellow Aldrich might 
have sized it up something in that way, and said 
something good about it. She wondered what 
had become of him, and if he were indeed as rich 
as the Frau be widowed Schramm had reported 
to Fraulein Ackern. Never had doubt crossed 
her mind that, back in America, he was “ the real 
thing ” socially — or might be if he liked. She 
was herself but a social waif, and so likely to 
remain, voice or no voice. When her thoughts 
took this turn, she sighed a little. Were new am- 
bitions arising from the ashes of fulfillment in 
older ones? Could the Muses and this Germany 
have brought her thus far : that being at a point 
where she might make herself independent of all 
social distinction and live in a world quite out- 
side it, she should first begin, vaguely, to feel 
its importance? 

Perhaps ! 

Ambition must keep hungry while it looks from 
its own laden plate toward somebody else’s across 
the table. 


156 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Antipodal to the honorable plane represented 
by Aldrich, was the Graf von Liidersberg, whom 
she did the honor not to misapprehend in the 
least. In proportion as she cultivated him or per- 
mitted him to cultivate her, would this artistic 
success be nourished, and the misty social yearn- 
ing starved on the menu of the Bohemia into 
which the Graf might freely enter, but out of 
which the Furman might not freely return. 

Or would it be so? For some reason she 
couldn’t but have her doubts. The Graf was, 
after all, a very simple sort of Lebeman, and 
might be more manipulated than manipulating, if 
one showed a little hardness, a little decision. 
Frau Heincke had in more than one discourse 
passingly alluded to him as popular among the 
theatrical folk, but with the disadvantage of be- 
ing poor — one of the poorest of his exalted rank. 
That, then, was why he was so approachable. 
Money was a great leveler when you hadn't it. 

The Graf was often a bore, but not often 
enough not to be a problem. He was literally 
complicated by his accessibility. Victoria was, 
therefore, more than glad he was not in Vienna 
now, and not likely to be until the cool of the 
autumn. She rather thought she’d like to see 
the Aldrich chap. There, she was convinced, was 
one good man ! She had always enjoyed talking 
157 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


to him: sometimes she had even enjoyed hear- 
ing him talk. 

His standards were the distinct lift the earliest 
ideals she could remember made her sometimes 
grope for. And she would have to be silly and 
hypocritical with herself to try to deny her cer- 
tainty that she had made her impression. Maybe 
it was effaced by now, but she had surely made it. 
Perhaps she ought to send him her address, which 
would be permitting the letter he’d been very 
ready to write. 

This impulse she finally dismissed. Things 
were at too early a stage as yet. She must sit 
up and look round. There was the great range 
in the other side of her problem which she was 
overlooking. Notwithstanding the fact that she 
was an embodied Voice, there was something 
which kept her from being an artist. Not yet 
had she found “ Temperament,” the thing those 
singers who had nothing else always appeared to 
have in abundance. After all, wasn’t that, in her 
particular case, the most desirable thing in the 
world? She had at least journeyed, afoot, with 
erect head, to the career of all careers, in the 
city of all cities, in this only world, where “ Tem- 
perament ” might be located and caught on the 
wing, as it were. When she cogitated upon this 
her longing to find it, to be an artist , grew in- 

158 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


tense. She sometimes thought it worth every- 
thing in the world to be an artist. Not always 
— but sometimes. She must sit up and take 
notice ! 

It was during an interminable reverie of this 
nature, with chaotic pros and cons, and inde- 
cisions, all stimulating enough to be stitched into 
the turquoise silk blouse she was embroidering for 
herself (by way of having something to do) that 
Victoria was brought to a halt, one afternoon. 
The halt was a visiting card. While not a se- 
rious thing in itself, it foreshadowed a series of 
re-calculations. Frau Heincke brought it in, hav- 
ing appropriated it from the maid, following her 
habit of confiscating and personally presenting 
any card of importance. The Graf von Luders- 
berg was prematurely back, and had presented 
himself. 

Victoria shrugged to think what a mistake he 
had made. 

Prematureness is surely a blight, self-gener- 
ated, by enthusiastic intention. Forthwith Vic- 
toria tightened her longish upper lip, and set her- 
self to a resolution to remember Aldrich, only 
Aldrich, and all he had said, and all he seemed to 
stand for. The Graf had gained absolutely 
nothing by coming back like this. Perhaps he 
had lost more than he might ever disturb him- 
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THE EMOTIONALIST 


self by suspecting. She would, however, take 
keen pleasure in unostentatiously directing his 
suspicions that way. 

She sent out word that she would see him in 
the main parlor. Frau Heincke had thought she 
might prefer the small reception-room, a sort of 
public private-chamber off the stairway. Under 
that impression she had stowed him away there, 
but Victoria’s command compelled her to bring 
him forth from the Turkish coziness — nearly 
suffocated. 


XIII 


THE TURQUOISE BLOUSE — AND THE MILITAR 

During the dull opening season of the opera, 
with the important personages all on extra vaca- 
tion — “ verurlaubt ” — Victoria’s professional 
duties were at their minimum. The assistant 
directors, and other secondary personages, who 
had temporary full control, kept the off-season 
on safe and beaten tracks. Despite her three 
years’ contract, the Furman was an experiment 
with which they did not care to tamper : not, at 
any rate, until higher responsibilities could be 
evoked. Once in ten days or so, whenever 
“ Hansel und Gretel ” was put on, she sang the 
role of the peasant mother, and there her duties 
ended. 

The weather was a zenith on the wane, with 
hot gusts, and limp, burnt greens, along the Ring- 
strasse. A zenith on the wane is indescribably 
more depressing than a wane which has reached 
its zenith. There is a pause at the stopping point 
of midsummer, which presages the death of na- 
161 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


ture, more intangibly, more penetratingly, than 
its final gasp and shudder of falling leaves. Even 
with her abundant leisure, Victoria had no mind 
to go a-hunting for an apartment. 

For the most part she kept to her room and 
stitched the remarkable gilt and silken flowers 
and a certain discontent into the turquoise blouse, 
which she calculated to finish some time before 
the following summer. Frau Heincke did much 
these days toward talking her out of an habitual 
restiveness which was yet an apathy. It was well 
that it was so, for when restiveness grows apa- 
thetic, it is an eruption turned inward. 

From motherly Frau Heincke, the fledgling 
Victoria learned all the romances of the opera of 
which she was now a part; those scandals which 
had become classic through wide and honorable 
recognition. They were of divers kinds, with 
yet a conventional similarity of basis. Behind 
them all loomed the colorful Seventh Command- 
ment. Victoria learned of flirtations of singing 
ingenues with royalty. She grew erudite with 
morganatic marriages into the ballet; and house- 
hold arrangements between the palace and the 
chorus, and endless picturesque adulteries and in- 
sanities and suicides. It appeared that a popular 
destiny for singers was to grow very stout, and 
then stouter, and then too stout (which meant, 
162 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


surely, an incredible degree of it), whereupon 
one would be given a farewell performance of 
one's greatest role, a silver laurel wreath, innu- 
merable curtain calls, and opportunity for utter- 
ance of a tearful “ Auf wiedersehen.” After all 
of which one would be permitted to go into re- 
tirement with the husband, titled or the reverse, 
one had married twenty years beforehand, when 
the public had first been electrified by the great 
role. 

Frau Heincke particularly liked to dwell on 
the story of the beautiful Binoka. Surely had 
the Fraulein Furman heard of the beautiful 
Binoka! No? Unbelievable! But the Binoka 
had retired in great glory two or three winters 
ago, on marrying the Graf von Fiirstenlohe. She 
had been his mistress for eighteen years, but they 
couldn’t marry until the Emperor had agreed to 
let him divorce his good and true wife, who was 
very religious. Cynics had prophesied that he 
would some day divorce the beautiful Binoka in 
turn. Optimists had predicted that he would 
some day return to the good and true wife. The 
wife herself, it was said, believed that, and had 
settled herself to the meek awaiting, which is the 
boon of loyalty and the blessing of hope. But 
those who knew the Binoka best had grave doubts 
of either theory. Having caught many sound 
163 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


American terms, Frau Heincke expressed per- 
sonal conviction that the Binoka was a 
“ sticker.” 

If you married an officer of the army (ex- 
plained Frau Heincke) he must do the retiring 
and let you support him. Your salary even at 
the Hofoperntheater would never put you enough 
ahead for the twenty thousand gulden the army 
regulations required him to marry. And though 
he might marry as much more as he liked, he 
could not marry less and retain his commission. 
He might, of course, make you eligible by pre- 
senting the amount to you if he had it. But he 
too rarely had it ! Or when, in rare cases, he did 
have it, he frequently didn’t care for the opera, 
alas God! 

Upon these by-laws of the code in the theat- 
rical world, and many besides, Frau Heincke 
elaborated to the limit of any encouragement 
given her to do so. Many of them were, of 
course, known to Victoria already, but at close 
range and first hand, they were usually absorb- 
ing enough to hear all about, all over again. 
Apropos of the army officers, Frau Heincke as- 
sured Victoria that, though often a worthless, a 
“ nicht-nutzige,” lot, they were yet extremely 
amusing, and a great source of consolation to the 
singers and the theatrical ladies generally. With- 
164 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


in a few days she was expecting her Tilly home 
for a visit — her Tilly of the Stadt-theater in 
Buchsenhimmel — and her Tilly had many friends 
among them. The Fraulein Furman must join 
her Tilly in having two or three of them in for a 
pleasant sociable evening, one-time, with, viel- 
leicht, a little mus ikf There was one in particu- 
lar, a rascal of a Hungarian Ober-Leutnant, who 
played the violin, aber ausgezeichnet! 

To this proposal Victoria had made no objec- 
tion; and so, sooner than expected, it came about 
that Fraulein Tilly’s arrival precipitated her first 
social diversion. Fraulein Tilly proved lan- 
guidly buxom, black-eyed and golden-haired. She 
had the careful, clear enunciation of the actress, 
and pleased Victoria from the start by taking her 
for granted, somehow, without overtaking her. 
Moreover, Fraulein Tilly kept herself valuable 
by keeping much to herself and not even appear- 
ing at the American filled tables of the Pension 
dinner. Somewhere toward noon of the day be- 
fore her departure she slid mysteriously through 
the hallways to Victoria. She was clad in a black 
kimono covered with huge gold dragons, and 
after apologizing that she had just arisen, she an- 
nounced her mother’s plan for the evening. They 
would receive the officers, friends all of them 
almost from her childhood, either in Fraulein 

165 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Tilly’s own room, or in the Fraulein Furman’s, 
just as the Fraulein Furman should prefer. 

“ Why not here ? ” said Victoria. “ It’s really a 
lovely room — don’t you think ? My piano is very 
nice, and the divan I sleep on is behind a screen.” 

That settled the matter. Matters were easily 
settled with Fraulein Tilly, who comprehended 
everything instantly with a clear-cut “ selbst- 
verstandlich ” on a lazy intonation. Her orig- 
inal idea had been that they keep the little affair 
quite to themselves, but Victoria demurred. 

“You say your Ober-Leutnant plays the fiddle? 
Well, just think how those poor girls so far from 
home would enjoy that ! And I sing such a little 
bit in ‘ Hansel und Gretel,’ yet every one of them 
has pegged out to hear me! All just because I’m 
American, too. And the very first time I sang 
that old woman role, the boys sent flowers though 
they’d barely met me at meal-times — and the poor 
chaps couldn’t understand why I couldn’t receive 
them over the footlights. I must do an aria for 
them, and let one of those Paderewski girls ac- 
company me. I understand what you mean, honey. 
[Victoria did not hesitate at temporary intimacy 
when it came natural.] I understand — it might 
be nicer; but it would be a pity to leave the other 
boarders out ! ” 

“ Selbstverstandlich,” agreed Fraulein Tilly, 
1 66 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


who had thrown herself on the screened divan 
alluded to. “ Why, certainly.” 

“ It would be a pity,” repeated Fraulein Tilly, 
after a pause, which might seem to indicate some 
indecision on Victoria’s part. Fraulein Tilly said 
it would be a pity, as if there were nothing else 
to say. For that matter, she said everything as 
if there were nothing else to say — or perhaps 
worth the saying, Victoria thought. She prob- 
ably saved herself for her acting in that way. 
Everywhere, in the Pension Heincke, Victoria 
was getting points. 

Therefore, was the whole Pension personnel 
gratefully in Victoria’s room, when the officers 
arrived. Frau Heincke showed them in, single- 
file, following up in the rear herself. Victoria 
had the feeling that this particularly sociable 
commingle had been explained to them as mere 
preliminary, and found she had not been mistaken 
when everybody left at ten, except the actress 
and her officers, who had started the movement 
to go. As if at a signal they had arisen. But 
now that everyone was gone, they seemed in no 
especial hurry. When Victoria urged them to 
be seated and stay awhile, they acquiesced with 
an alacrity that bespoke preparation in advance. 

Victoria found two, out of the three, more or 
less nondescript. They had geometrical shoul- 
167 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


ders and curled mustaches, as did every other 
Viennese from the Militar she had seen; and 
they smiled much and said, “ Bitte schon, gra- 
cious Fraulein,” a great deal. 

But the third was not nondescript. In the 
first place he was a veritable giant, overtopping 
the other two by a good half-head. He knew no 
English — the other two thought they knew a little 
— and that fact had kept him absolutely quiet until 
the departure of the American contingent. For 
Victoria, the military titles had not been made 
quite clear in the formal hurry of the introduc- 
tions, and she was delighted when her natural 
choice turned out to be the musical Ober-Leut- 
nant of Frau Heincke’s recommendation. 

The Ober-Leutnant evidently understood. He 
appropriated Victoria at once, with a foregone 
proprietorship, leaving the Tilly and “ the 
mamma ” in the kindly care of his two brother 
officers. 

The width of the room separated the two 
groups. 

“ Are we sociable ? ” inquired Victoria, a little 
anxiously. 

“ They have wished it so. They told me they 
would make it so. You sing very well,” replied 
the Ober-Leutnant. 

Victoria could only reply that she had under- 
168 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


stood he played very well on the violin. Why 
had he not brought his violin ? 

“ I did,” he explained. “ I merely lied about 
it when you inquired in the presence of the others. 
It is in the hallway. Shall I get it ? ” 

“ Do,” Victoria urged. “ Though probably 
some of them will hear you, and vote me an or- 
dinary fake , as we say in English.” 

The Ober-Leutnant arose. “ I get my violin,” 
he announced to the room at large. 

He was back in the room in a moment, tuning 
up to the Tilly's chord of the seventh on the sev- 
enth degree. 

Out he fared, thereupon, soaring skyward with 
his steady bow and vibrant left hand. Victoria 
caught the miraculous spontaneity of the thing. 
Once again she must bow her head as she had 
been sometimes wont to do when the Lubke had 
pointed out certain distinctions. This was “ Tem- 
perament.” This was something she had not: 
not yet ! 

Her voice half implored when he had finished. 

“ How do you do it ? ” 

He saw the tribute, and, being flushed like a 
boy with pleasure at it, assured Victoria that he 
was but a bungling amateur, an “ elender Dilet- 
tante.” 

Victoria shook her head. 

12 169 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ The old Lubke was right. You people have 
something we have not. I can’t make up my 
mind whether we might not have it, too, if we 
could only train to your point of view.” 

The Ober-Leutnant shrugged his shoulders. 
He was not problematical. In calling himself a 
bungling amateur, he had expressed himself to 
his limit. 

“ Fraulein will sing beautiful roles,” he said. 
“ She also will live. It will all come.” 

He threw further finality into another shoul- 
der-shrug, and tossed off a tiny glass of kummel. 
Frau Heincke had brought the kummel with the 
remark that he must have played himself out. 

For the rest, his conversation was terse, and 
uninflected. Victoria found it masculine, satisfy- 
ing, and to the point. Particularly she loved to 
watch the lazy flash of his brown eyes : his only 
amplification when he said things with a mono- 
syllabic effect of getting them uttered and done 
with. The impression this evening left with her 
was interesting enough to half fill a letter she 
wrote and mailed to America, next morning. 
With the three chums of her early Dresden days 
she still kept up a whimsical correspondence, and 
now she wrote to one of them, describing her new 
Ober-Leutnant, at some length, as a “ husky 
brute.” 


170 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


More than anything that had happened since 
her arrival, indeed, did his advent signalize for 
Victoria the keynote of new mental, or emotional, 
processes. The Ober-Leutnant took her for 
granted in a fashion not unlike that of Fraulein 
Tilly. She had entered that world where things 
were ordered by temperament, and she would 
come to it by her own directest route: this ap- 
peared to be their commodious inference. 

With the Ober-Leutnant Temperament was a 
mere plaything, and yet look how he managed it. 
How much more then might it transpire that her 
profession would exact it of her as a foregone 
necessity. Victoria began to fear she too defi- 
nitely understood, nowadays, what the Graf von 
Liidersberg had meant when he used to tell her 
she had too little to look back upon. She was 
not given to timidity, but something in the Ober- 
Leutnant’s amiable, indolent twinkle, when he 
looked at her, made her tremble at herself — or 
threatened to, until she decided that anything of 
the sort was very foolish. 


XIV 

IN WHICH FOR THIRTY SECONDS VICTORIA IS 
TEMPERAMENTAL 

Following Fraulein Tilly's regretted return 
to Buchsenhimmel in Baiern, Victoria's days 
gained, as they must, in timbre and resiliency. 
The Ober-Leutnant was the sole member of his 
original three not to be dropped from her calen- 
dar, but she met many other gentlemen-from-the- 
Militar, in one way or another. One and all, they 
were disrespectfully respectful and insinuatingly 
gallant. One and all, they were ready to inter- 
pret themselves as events for her. Seen through 
Victoria's eyes they were not events. They were 
hardly even occurrences. She met them smil- 
ingly enough when she had to, and dismissed 
them from her mind. They were in the nature 
of vibratory particles, perceptible in the sunbeam 
which began to pierce her attic innocuousness. 
Also they differed from her likable Ober-Leut- 
nant enough to give him an added valuation. 

172 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


The time was surely moving. The Direktor of 
the Opera was now back from his vacation, his 
mightiness being instantly perceivable in the more 
anxious atmosphere of fly, foyer, and front-stage. 
It was in the course of events that Victoria should 
ere long be bidden to sing one of the larger roles 
of her line — her Fach, as they termed it. She 
received formal notice to be ready with her Am- 
neris for rehearsals of “ Aida,” which was to be 
newly mounted and put on with the eclat of a re- 
vival. From now on she was to know profes- 
sional responsibility, sometimes within hardly en- 
durable limits. 

It was about this time that the Graf von 
Liidersberg, whom she had half-snubbed, without 
in the least extinguishing, came one day, with 
the announcement that it had been arranged she 
should sing at once in a chamber concert, am 
Hof! before the Emperor ! 

“So soon ! ” she cried out in dismay. 

“ The sooner the better. It is very unusual 
at this stage,” replied the Graf, “ but — we have 
done it.” 

Victoria felt she must appear very ungrateful, 
and so was moved to a mechanical putting for- 
ward of both hands to him. 

“ You are good,” she said, “ that is — to me! 
I’m sure you must think me an awful prig not to 

173 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


feel quite certain it’s not bad of me to let you 
be.” 

The Graf seemed to understand and to be in- 
clined to give her plenty of time. 

“ Fraulein, Fraulein,” he replied, with benevo- 
lent affection, “ there is for the artist no possi- 
ble danger — they live on flame, all of them — and 
no hurry ! ” 

“ But there must be ! ” she cried. “ There cer- 
tainly must be some hurry. Look how you’re 
making me gallop.” 

“ Because you sing before the Kaiser? Pfui! 
He has heard them all. To him the worst is like 
the best, because, when he must hear them, he 
must always smile just the same.” 

“ Worse and worse ! ” Victoria felt a terror. 
The new honor, doubtful of judgment, began to 
get palpably on her nerves. 

“ And he has the wisdom — the old man. He 
has seen everything. If you have no past to let 
him hear when you sing, he will hear your future, 
and so it doesn’t matter. There’s no use wait- 
ing. They will write of it in the American news- 
papers. That should please you.” 

Victoria smiled. Her brothers would read of 
it, just as they would read of presentations of ju- 
bilee singers, and divorcees, and pugilists. The 
amusing part was that they would be no less im- 
174 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


pressed. In Dresden, the public would not hear 
of it at all: or, if they did, in a merely private 
way as court small-talk. The good chap Aldrich 
would be certain to run across it, over across the 
water, if only because he wouldn’t mean to. She 
had had the same feeling about him in Dresden, 
when she had set to work to account for, or ex- 
plain away, many things she had no ground for 
assuming he knew anything about. He was one 
of those people gossip was sure to reach, because 
they were sure to ignore it. And deep in their 
hearts, according to Victoria's theory, such peo- 
ple ignored gossip because they so much feared it. 
They but fought off their diabolical intuition of 
the germ of truth too often lurking in it. Noth- 
ing made people so brave as cowardice. 

The fellow Aldrich would probably take her 
engagement to sing am Hof at its exact value. 
He would throw in the Graf von Liidersberg, as 
a factor, and know all about it, and never admit 
to himself that he knew anything about it. The 
thought irritated her, with its lightning-like dart- 
ing and redarting through her mind, as she chat- 
ted ahead with the Graf. She chatted, it might 
be mentioned, with more than her wonted anima- 
tion, and the thought rubbed her quite the wrong 
way with the extremely absent and unoffending 
Aldrich. What right would this prig of an 
175 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


American have to assume the Graf had anything 
to do with her singing am Hof ! Really, he was 
a sort of prig when you came to get him well cut 
down, and trimmed around. Or was he ? May- 
be she didn’t do him justice. She thought she 
would like to see him, study him, if her way of 
going at things could be called that, and decide 
over again. She had somehow just lost him out 
of her memory without quite being able to for- 
get him. 

Her relief was that she would sing her Amneris 
before singing am Hof. If she did Amneris in 
the least respectably, it would justify the Hof 
proposition, technically, at any rate. 

The relief was, alas! short-lived. For her the 
rehearsals of Amneris were but a further 
awakening to the fact that she had been luckier 
in her engagement itself, than in her proven fit- 
ness for it. This misgiving, always a closet skel- 
eton, more or less, grew pronounced, for the time 
being. To the Direktor, whom she had so re- 
cently met, she perceived herself such a whole- 
some disappointment that she could conjecture 
his resolution never again to engage a leading 
contralto in a poke, so to speak. 

“ You have learned something of singing the 
role,” he admitted, as he tried to dispose her, pic- 
turesquely and logically, in the group of the first 
176 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


finale — a stiff proposition at best. “ You have 
also learned something of the ‘ business * ! That 
is not enough. It is hardly a beginning. Gott 
im Himmel! this stage is no Pensionat! ” 

Anger swelled within her for an instant, and 
she had the crudest sort of an impulse to com- 
mand him, in Pensionat parlance, to please tell 
her something she didn’t know already. She 
would have taken superlative pleasure in seeing 
him knocked down by one of the brothers she’d 
had so little use for. She felt she could have 
done it herself, had she been a man. 

The effort of self-control brought a quick col- 
lapse in a return of humility. 

From the Direktor a glance shot forth which 
went to her like a surgeon-prong, with balm on 
its point. 

“ Ja, ja,” he said. “ You were magnificent 
just now, saying nothing, because I made you 
feel. Do that again. Do not be always so 
careful ! ” 

She came back at him with a brilliant 
smile : 

“ I must take care to take less care ? ” 

“ Just so, Fraulein, but the other way round. 
Let go! Let go! Eat flame. Devour it up. 
Stand and let it consume you while you rise up 
out of it! That’s the idea. Now once again. 
177 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


So ! ” He gave the sign to the Kapellmeister. 
Down crashed the orchestra. 

Victoria struggled for breath against this rush- 
ing urgence, this omnivorous demand for what 
she could not arouse to. She was borne upon it, 
as a disabled swimmer upon a wave, for a mo- 
ment. Then, at the climax, she stopped, dropped 
down her hands as might have been dropped a 
plummet, and collapsed in a huddle on the nearest 
chair. 

“ I cannot do it,” she said, dryly. “ I cannot. 
It’s no use. I might as well resign.” 

The Direktor looked on with a patience which 
was the inexpressible iciness of disgust. 

“ It is the hurry of the thing,” she tried to ex- 
plain, with the tears standing in her eyes. “ Such 
things cannot be forced. Oh, do please just give 
me time, and let me sing — sing — as well as I can, 
until — until I can sing better ! ” 

The Direktor muttered something to himself. 
On this stage one was supposed to sing better 
before one was permitted to sing at all. He was 
only half heard, and he bit his lips and ordered 
the rehearsal to proceed. 

Victoria was dragged by the weight of a sense 
of failure more abject than any she had ever 
known. Such despair had not been her fate even 
in those horrible first days when the Lubke had 
i 7 8 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


drilled her head-tones with the German she didn’t 
understand, in expletives destined never to be 
translatable. 

But the Direktor did not again interrupt, and 
after a while she found her voice again and kept 
on the wings of it. By the last act, she was soar- 
ing out on big, round tones like a Cathedral or- 
gan: like some divine and apotheosized bugle. 
She could do that. 

The rehearsal over, she stood to one side, de- 
serted and crestfallen. Very kindly the Direktor 
approached her, and took her by the hand. 

“ Child,” he said, “ I see it now. You have a 
wonderful school. You’ve learned the bigger 
part of what your mere brain can teach you. 
What you must learn is to feel more. Why, 
child ! You didn’t even weep that time you broke 
down.” 

“ Indeed, I wanted to,” admitted Victoria. 

“ You should have. For a woman that’s the 
true way. The law of any ascendence in a 
woman is the law of the amount she may yield — 
and yet recover ! ” 

Victoria saw the trend. She knew what he 
would add. He spoke it distinctly, perhaps a 
little cynically, as if pronouncing a judgment, 
where there might be nothing more important 
than a Nemesis. 


179 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ You have not made for yourself enough 
Tem-per-a-ment. You must learn to love ” 

She laughed aloud. 

“ And to be loved — to be keck — that’s it, isn’t 
it ? My teacher told me that, too — or was it the 
Graf von Liidersberg? Well, honored Herr Di- 
rektor, I do thank you — and I may conclude to 
try, some day.” 

In an instant it occurred to her that she was 
keck enough already to be perhaps impertinent: 
a misplaced misgiving, apparently. The Direktor 
merely assured her that was the way to talk, and 
left her to the adjustment of hat and veil. 

For all that, when Victoria went out from the 
K. K. Hofoperntheater that day, she felt, after 
her individual fashion, that she had surely 
“ queered ” herself all around. In her wretched- 
ness, she came upon the Ober-Leutnant just out- 
side the stage entrance, off the Karnthner Ring. 
He was awaiting her. The sight of his shoulders, 
broad by nature, and padded in a military coat 
beyond the limits of nature, was comforting. He 
made his officer’s bow, his dog-brown eyes a cross 
betwixt sleep and a star’s twinkle. 

“ Servus ! ” responded Victoria, and she said it 
with all her heart. “ This is good of you.” 

“ You want me? You are glad? I knew you 
would be,” said the Ober-Leutnant. 

180 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ Yes/’ replied Victoria. “ I wanted you/' 

“ I always know I shall be wanted,” said the 
Ober-Leutnant, “ and then I come.” 

“ Yes,” agreed Victoria. “ How much you 
people over here do manage to know all about 
yourselves. It doesn't make you obnoxious, 
either, as it would any of us, out in America.” 

“ No, no,” he protested, and knit his brows to 
an effort. “ You are not right. It is not so. It 
is so: you out of America know so much about 
yourselves all the time! You dare not know 
anything, for you know so much. So is it ! ” 
For the first time in Victoria’s experience the 
Ober-Leutnant wanted to talk. He had things to 
say: .it was an astonishing side. The fun of it 
was that, though manifestly bent on saying them 
all, he yet failed to appear talkative. 

“ The Americans are like the English,” he went 
on. “ We like them much better. They are 
much worse. The English keep the Intimacy [he 
used the French-derived “ Intimitat ”] for the 
family. In the family the English have the 
emotion. But everywhere, out of the family and 
in it, the Americans know they suffer from too 
much of the emotion. Everywhere the Ameri- 
cans have so much emotion they will not allow 
themselves to have any. Everywhere the Amer- 
icans know themselves so well they will not be 
181 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


intimate, no, not in the family — not in the 
soul/’ 

Victoria had followed him with interest. “ It 
may be reducible to formula,” she agreed. 
“ We’re simply so self-conscious we dare not give 
ourselves away. That is what you mean? ” 

“ Is it not so ? ” 

“ Habit does the rest,” she replied, “ and then 
we cannot ! ” 

To the Ober-Leutnant such an outlook was the 
blackest depths of pessimism. “ No, no,” he en- 
couraged. “ Not so bad. It is not so bad that 
you can never! After a time-long you will get 
fire. Here in our opera you will get fire, after 
many years.” 

“ If I’m not too old.” 

“ No, no, not too old,” he consoled. “ Frau- 
lein is not too old.” 

" Thank Heaven for that. But you know, I 
meant, I might be some day.” 

The Ober-Leutnant shrugged. She had gotten 
beyond him. She perceived the crime of fishing 
further in such limpid waters. 

“ You like the Herr Direktor?” he asked 
her. 

Care crept over her face again. 

“ He’s the right person for me” she said. “ It 
concerns him more, I fear, that I’m not the right 
182 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


person for him. He’s disappointed — aber — 
frightfully!” 

Another shrug from the Ober-Leutnant. 

“ It was only a rehearsal. You have a friend 
in the Graf von Liidersberg. So have I always 
heard. Get him to fix the claque for you. You 
sing beautifully. Let him fix the claque. It is 
not so bad.” 

His innocence was enough to disarm Victoria 
and leave her stranded on the points he missed. 
What he had just suggested was unthinkable 
from the lips of an American gentleman — like 
Aldrich, for instance; or even from an Austrian 
gentleman, like the Graf alluded to, for instance. 
She realized an oddity in the fact that the 
Ober-Leutnant was inoffensive, for all he might 
know no better than to say; and well-nigh lov- 
able for whatever he might say better than he 
knew. 

Moreover, his parting salute at the outer door 
of the Pension had a deference as loyal and un- 
feigned as any she could have claimed had she 
been a Princess dismissing a vassal. 

“ It might all be well ! ” he said. “ I shall hear 
your Amneris. I shall tell you how you must 
make it, afterward.” 

“Do,” said Victoria.' 

“ And after many years you will learn.” 

183 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Yet Victoria mounted the stairway, her finger- 
tips richly a-tingle with his deference. 

On her dresser in her room she found the 
weekly missive from Fraulein Ackern. The poor 
lady was not doing as well as both Victoria and 
herself had hoped. Her health seemed no better. 
She was thinking of giving up Carlsbad as a use- 
less quest and returning to the Blasewitz villa. 
She wondered that Victoria had not yet ordered 
the things sent on. Beyond this, there was no 
hint of her former plan to spend a part of the 
winter in Vienna, and Victoria felt the natural 
pang of conscience. She must be seeking that 
apartment. She must get ready for the inevi- 
table balancing of favors, with her benefactress. 
But she did dread the care, the responsibility, 
and, above all, the expense. Her debts loomed 
large before her. 

Frau Heincke came, as usual, with her ominous 
rap and her inquiry as to whether Victoria 
“ wished something.” As usual, also, she lin- 
gered to inquire, for perhaps the fifteenth time, 
how Fraulein Victoria liked the Ober-Leutnant 
Von Zonsk. 

Victoria was more than ordinarily good- 
humored and confidential. She replied in English 
that she thought the Ober-Leutnant von Zonsk 
was “ bully.” 


184 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“You like him better than the Herr Graf?” 
probed Frau Heincke. 

Victoria elided. The Herr Graf was a “ right 
nice old thing,” even if he was a little simple. 

“ He is a Genie ! ” said Frau Heincke, and Vic- 
toria perceived the words to be thrown out as a 
lure. Frau Heincke was insatiate with the thrill 
of developments. 

“ Yes,” agreed Victoria. “ He is a genius, 
even if he is a little simple. He doesn't know a 
great deal.” 

“ Ach,” protested Frau Heincke. “ He knows 
much, aber dock! ” 

“ I suppose,” concluded Victoria, “ that it is 
just as you say. He is a genius, and knows a 
great deal, to know so little.” 

“ Aber! ” ventured Frau Heincke. 

“ Better a genius with a touch of ass, than an 
ass with a touch of genius,” pursued Victoria, 
meditatively, having had enough of conversation 
for to-day. 

On her precipitous retirement Frau Heincke 
had the private opinion that Victoria's final re- 
mark was a slur at the Graf, and that it indicated 
lack of gratitude before the fact that within three 
weeks Fraulein Furman would sing am Hof — 
before the Emperor ! 


13 


XV 

IN WHICH ONE HEARS AGAIN HOW VICTORIA 
SANG BEFORE THE EMPEROR 

Victoria sang her Amneris before the pub- 
lic of Vienna and succeeded in not disgracing her- 
self. Among the loyal Americans were a few 
who thought she had done even better than that. 
She was relieved; and nothing makes for com- 
fort or courage more than relief. Later, as ar- 
ranged, she sang am Hof : before the Emperor. 

His Majesty, accompanied by the Direktor of 
his Kaiserly, Kingly Opera, came quite infor- 
mally into the ante-chamber where Victoria 
awaited her turn along with two or three of the 
others : a royal baritone or so; a royal tenor. 

By free translation of the same parlance, she 
was a royal contralto. The idea struck her as a 
little funny. But she was considerably fright- 
ened and her hands were quite cold. Before the 
appearance of the Kaiser and the Kaiserly Direk- 
tor, she had asked one of the baritones if his were 
1 86 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


also cold. With chattering teeth he had replied 
that they were. 

This baritone had been a prime favorite in 
Vienna for a round dozen years. Victoria un- 
derstood he had sung Am Hof once or twice each 
year of his incumbency. 

“Doesn’t one ever outlive the nervousness?” 
she asked. 

“ Not when you sing before the Emperor. I 
don’t know — there is something about it ! ” 

This was his only theory in the matter. He 
might have explained it, to some extent, by birth : 
he was the son of devout German- Austrian peas- 
ants. Victoria, for her part, felt much better 
after the Kaiser had been brought around and 
she had been presented. 

“ You are new,” the very old Kaiser said to 
her, with his so traditional winsomeness. “ Well 
— that is good. Keep so just as long as you can. 
There is always time! There is always time — 
for everything else.” 

She felt like pouring forth her dilemma in his 
ears. She would have liked to reply : “ But, 
Your Majesty, they’re trying to hurry me out of 
my newness. They’re trying to make me live out 
more than I can feel — or feel more than I can 
live out.” Could she but say this, the Kaiser- 
lichen Direktor, who stood beside the Emperor, 
187 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


might see the lesson His Majesty was pointing, 
more plainly. 

As things were, she did what she should, and 
bowed low, and thanked the Kaiser. She real- 
ized that the Kaiser might jest with her as he 
chose, if he chose. But at this particular time 
and place her business was merely to acknowledge 
whatever he did or said with that worshipful def- 
erence which was so in the atmosphere she could 
but feel it as a sort of measureless height elevat- 
ing His Majesty above his own personal selfhood. 

He must be a hardened democrat indeed who 
would find anything incongruous, when the with- 
ered little bundle of uniform and decoration 
turned from her to the huge baritone of peasant 
ancestry, and the baritone towered above him, 
blushing, tremulous, obeisant. Victoria had 
heard this baritone thundering forth the venge- 
ance of Wotan. Completely had he filled out 
her conception of a God. The genius of his peas- 
ant heritage had been a personality and a voice 
out of which he might carve the majesty of the 
spheres, the authority of omnipotence. But be- 
fore him now stood a Kaiser from the realms of 
matter, a Kaiser you might touch and yet not 
measure, a Kaiser whose credentials blazed his 
certification round the earth. 

What chance had here the merely fanciful God- 
188 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


King who could trumpet his edicts from painted 
clouds ? 

The real King, before whom the God-King 
trembled, stood on the polished floor of his own 
strong stone palace. The God-King but blos- 
somed in an imagination of tinted lights and 
gauzes. Victoria understood. 

And there had been fantastic thinkers, ready to 
proclaim that in the mind were the mighty things 
of the world ; that in the imagination of man lay 
the principalities of earth. Not much! thought 
Victoria. She stood, master of herself, proud of 
the American common-sense which some of her 
moods regretted. Things had been what they 
were from the beginning of time. Always had 
they been so arranged that the Cloud-King with 
all the cosmos in his brain might at any time con- 
veniently be kicked from the august presence of 
the real King — the King with the stone palace 
and the credentials. She recalled Mozart and a 
few others. Of course, it might be a little dif- 
ferent when both were dead; but not necessarily, 
even then. 

One thing stood forth with a certainty partic- 
ularly vivid here in this ante-chamber to which 
she had come at an Emperor’s bidding. It 
touched the respectability of Emperors and their 
ilk. Rank guaranteed respectability. Was re- 
189 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


spectability itself indeed. Or if by some stricture 
of terms it might happen not to be, then it was 
pretty sure to be above it : or, you might say, that 
through rank (enough of it) you were so respect- 
able that you didn’t have to be at all so. 

But what if you had not the rank? 

In that case, respectability in the strictest 
sense would be of undoubted service in meeting 
rank half-way. 

Victoria’s eyes sparkled. This decision had 
been instantaneous. If she was destined not to 
be the real artist, as the Lubke, in misanthropic 
moments was given to predicting, then she would 
certainly not be over hasty in making those sac- 
rifices conventionally regarded as necessary to be- 
coming one. 

If, as seemed likely in her particular case, re- 
spectability were a stronger asset than this Tem- 
perament of which they were always prating, then 
she would hold like grim death to her respect- 
ability. 

Standing by the grand piano at one end of the 
great salon, with the eyes of the Kaiser’s guests, 
Vienna’s ultra aristocracy, upon her, and the 
Kaiser’s dimmed orbs smiling encouragement 
among them, from the foreground, she sang her 
Beethoven, Franz, and Schubert as she had sung 
them in the Lubke’s musicale. They were the 
190 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


wise choice beyond which she knew it were better 
not to venture. Instinct told her they were pleas- 
ing the Kaiser even before she learned the fact 
from his own lips afterwards, in words which 
were something more than the conventional com- 
pliment. 

The Kaiser told her he had been listening for 
years to individualities : she made him listen to a 
voice ! 

At rehearsal two or three mornings later, the 
Direktor chatted of the occasion agreeably. He 
assured Victoria that he was glad it had so hap- 
pened : glad the lack of temperament and conse- 
quent flawless literalness of her singing had en- 
listed His Majesty on her side. At the same 
time, he thought he ought, as her preceptor, to 
explain that the people who sang before His Maj- 
esty were usually people in whom temperament 
had been developed. Those in whom it had not 
been were indeed so rare in his experience, that 
the very novelty of the thing might account for 
his pleasure in it. The Direktor didn’t mind 
warning her that she might find the Viennese pop- 
ulace, in particular the military circle for which 
the opera practically existed, a little more difficult. 
His Majesty had been easy. His Majesty might 
much enjoy it as an isolated instance, or as typ- 
ical of this particular stage. But His Majesty 
191 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


himself would not expect her to always sing as 
she did now. “ Wake up, wake up, Fraulein 
Amerikanerin, ,, he enjoined briskly. “ Learn 
life and love — lernen Sie das Leben und Lieben.” 

Victoria was not impressed by this advice. It 
appeared a little stale this morning against the 
fresh exultance of her new day. After rehearsal 
she compared notes with the royal tenor and the 
two royal baritones as to the jewels which had 
been sent them. 

One and all, they were still happy, on an after- 
math memory of Royalty’s smile. The lyric 
tenor had received a diamond-set cigar case, and 
was on the point of deciding to learn to smoke, 
with misgivings as to the very tenuous quality 
of the voice he might wreck thereby. The heroic 
baritone’s gift had been the handsomest of the 
four. He had received a sunburst watch charm 
of diamonds and rubies, quite too valuable to ever 
risk suspending at the end of his leathern watch- 
ribbon. Victoria described her own gift to the 
others as a bracelet, very heavy, and set with a 
huge mounted pearl. It looked simply exquisite 
in the box, she described; though she doubted if 
she should wear it. She was big herself, and the 
bracelet was correspondingly big. Only little 
women, in her opinion, should wear heavy 
jewelry. 


192 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


The royal lyric baritone jested with her that 
she might pawn it to help pay for the exagger- 
atedly gorgeous dress she had worn, which he 
surmised must have cost her a good half of her 
first year’s opera pay. Victoria was earnest an 
instant before she controlled herself for the ex- 
pected laugh. His hyperbole had struck nearer 
than he recked. She had ordered the dress of 
Drey socks, two weeks before, and had added the 
eight hundred gulden it had cost to her two thou- 
sand dollars of outstanding debts, covering her 
three years as a student in Dresden before she 
had met Fraulein Ackern. 

Of this debt, seven hundred dollars was reason- 
ably urgent. It had been loaned her in small 
sums per Post-office money orders, from time to 
time, by the two steamer-chums, who, after a 
year or so of Dresden study, had gone back home 
to earn their livelihood giving vocal lessons. 
Three hundred was for opera scores and sheet 
music at one of the Dresden firms which, at the 
Baronin Lubke’s suggestion, had given her un- 
limited credit. 

The story of the remaining thousand was ro- 
mantic. It had been sent her at a time when 
her distress was sorest, before the haven of ref- 
uge with Fraulein Ackern could be foreseen. 
Victoria had known a supremely darkest hour 
193 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


before the dawn : the open-handed comrades back 
in America had not been having their usual suc- 
cess with their classes — or so they wrote; she had 
seemed to have her hands on an engagement in 
Leipzig, but it had gone by her; everything looked 
hopeless. In her despair the happy thought had 
struck her that she might apply to an Amer- 
ican philanthropist known to have an interest in 
art and to be whimsically open-handed in fur- 
thering the interest of artists. To be sure, she 
had banked more on the vouchers which accom- 
panied the letter she sent than on the letter itself. 
The greater virtue of her plan lay in her extreme 
care that these credentials should be only from 
the highest, most unquestionable sources. Ba- 
ronin Lubke had stated the case over her signa- 
ture; the Vorsteher des Leipziger Gewandhaus- 
Concert Direktion had stated the case over again 
over his name, with innumerable seals and sig- 
nets. The leading music critic of Dresden had 
been another sponsor for the authenticity of her 
talent. Even the fastidious Direktor of the 
Leipzig opera had added his line declaring that, 
though he hadn’t yet engaged Fraulein Victoria 
Furman, “ hochbegabte Altistin,” ultra-gifted 
contralto, her gifts were yet such as to warrant 
him in believing that he might some day do so. 

This imposing array must surely either calm 
194 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


him or kill him, said Victoria (alluding, of course, 
to the philanthropist). Luckily, the latter event 
was not in the issue. By the return steamer had 
come the philanthropist’s thousand-dollar check, 
with his added graceful word of pleasure at being 
able to be of service in a case of such exceptional 
merit, and his courteous hope for the privilege of 
hearing Miss Furman at the Metropolitan some 
time within the not far future. 

Hardly quick enough had been the steamer 
which brought this check, however, to overtake 
Victoria’s dawn. Her darkest hour was already 
well on the wane. For, meanwhile, in a sequence 
of incredible swiftness, she had been taken up so- 
cially, had met Fraulein Ackern, and hardly real- 
izing what might be befalling her, had stepped 
aside from anxiety to opulence. 

And yet, during her year at the Ackern villa 
in Blasewitz, she had managed somehow to spend 
that thousand dollars. Just how she couldn’t for 
the life of her say, since Fraulein Ackern had 
anticipated her every need, her every wish, with 
feverish generosity. The most difficult problem 
Victoria encountered was this strange trite fact 
of finance : that the more you had, the less you 
had, and the more you needed ! In Utica of New 
York State, of America, she had once lived and 
saved money out of forty dollars a month. Now 
195 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


it was beyond her computation to manage to get 
through this first year on nearly double forty dol- 
lars per week. Certainly her debts would most 
of them go over to the second year’s increased 
salary. 

Thus was the point of trepidation when the 
lyric baritone touched on debts. The heroic bari- 
tone in his turn pooh-hooed the notion that a 
singer at the opera couldn’t save enough to in- 
sure an old age of comfort, and recommended 
a healthy cultivation of goulasch and beer. The 
lyric tenor raised his eyes Heavenward and con- 
fessed but to one deadly sin — his tailor — and one 
mortal terror — his haberdasher. But Victoria 
bore the burden home with her — the burden of 
the costume she had worn before the Kaiser, and 
might not find appropriate occasion to wear again 
until it should be old-fashioned; nay, worse — 
until it should be paid for. 

For a few days following, the sense of unwar- 
ranted self-indulgence goaded her to a hysteria 
of inquiry after private apartments. Naturally, 
her obligations touching Fraulein Ackern twinged 
her the more now that she could afford them less 
than ever. When a right thing is made less at- 
tainable through a wrong thing, it is at least re- 
furbished with new desirability. Most of Vic- 
toria’s colleagues at the opera were cross-exam- 
196 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


ined from day to day concerning localities, prices, 
and sizes of Wohnungs. She wanted her Woh- 
nung to be fech [she’d caught the Viennese 
word], but not too expensive. And she should 
like to have its rooms airy, but not too large or 
too many. Of course, she desired a good neigh- 
borhood, though its being fashionable was out of 
the question. When it came to that, there was no 
such thing as a fashionable neighborhood in 
Vienna, as far as she had been able to discover. 

Such an inquiry she chanced to make one morn- 
ing of Fraulein Sammarone, one of the soloist 
dancers, the occasion being an interluding chat 
between acts and arias. Fraulein Sammarone 
had lingered on after the rehearsal of the new 
Allegorical Ballet, to watch the work being done 
on the new French opera in which Victoria had 
a subordinate role. 

The Sammarone lifted her Madonna-face. 
She laughed merrily, in nasal high-pitch. 

“ Ach,” she said, with the inevitable shrug, 
which, in her case, rippled all along under the 
slimness of her tight-tailored blue. “ Here in the 
opera one must let someone else look after those 
things.” 

Victoria didn’t understand. 

“ One must have a good friend,” smiled the 
Sammarone, “ a Prince, or a Jeweler, or a Graf. 

197 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


But, ach, I forget! The Americans are said to 
have stricter ideas.” 

Victoria was shocked; genuinely enough, in- 
deed, to bring a burst of apology from the dainty 
Sammarone. “ Himmel, Fraulein, I am uhr- 
stu pid! It is not yet so far, of course. Forgive 
forgive. I am stupid ! ” 

Victoria could not but be amused. After all, 
it was the dullest thing one could do, to try and 
air any code in this atmosphere. Small was 
the arrangement for ventilation. Three things 
counted here : ability, hard work, and their ever- 
lasting Temperament. This appeared to be the 
code of Art with details left to the adjustment of 
the artist. In some respects, too, it was harder, 
sterner, more exacting, in self-discipline, than any 
ideal of mere chastity could ever be. 

There was, though, a possibility that it made 
its ends the more difficult through its liberties in 
this respect. When you loosened your gear, you 
must better manage your steed. 

Victoria, though she hadn't yet quite decided, 
saw in this last point of view additional ground 
for adhering to her standards and remaining what 
her forgotten friends in America would have 
probably thought it essential to remain. More- 
over, many things might be tried, for the assist- 
ance of art, before one tried to be really what 
198 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


one was supposed to try not to be. Sometimes 
it looked as if the people about her felt that was 
all there was to it. 

There was, however, something about the Sam- 
marone’s illuminating nasals, coupled with her 
almost holily pure face, her torrent of apologies, 
because “ it was not yet so far ” — that Victoria 
hesitated to reflect upon, because it increased her 
uneasiness. Her uneasiness was now easily fed 
from several sources and, the chat with the Sam- 
marone being brushed aside, remained inefface- 
able. To rivet a thing on the memory, ignore it, 
systematically ! 

Then, too, the effect of the Sammarone’s words 
was augmented, somehow, in the standpoint of 
the Ober-Leutnant von Zonsk. His way of look- 
ing at things had, for Victoria, an obsession for 
which she could not quite account. When he 
dropped in of evenings and sat with narrowed 
eyes, veiled and burnished, looking more often 
straight ahead than in her direction, she had the 
fullest sense of it. After the fashion belonging 
solely to him, he punctuated her running com- 
mentary of daily events, with the Ja or the Nein, 
or the shrug, which, being simple, and to the 
point, was namelessly indirect. He was never 
analytical, though (as once when he had dis- 
cussed the Americans) he was sometimes conclu- 
199 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


sive. He was to no exceptional degree an in- 
tellect. This was rather a point in his favor with 
Victoria, who considered that he had the great 
good luck to be greater than his own mind. So 
many men, particularly in this old-world civiliza- 
tion, were just the opposite. 

Unlike any of the other men with whom she 
was now coming in contact, the Ober-Leutnant 
never flattered. Victoria was again prone to for- 
give, even to render him tribute of gratitude, for 
so frankly taking her as a woman : just a woman 
from whom he expected no more than from any 
other woman. No attitude is more fascinating 
to a woman than this, provided it be done with 
room for conviction on her part that she yet 
stands first among all women : that she may share 
their weaknesses, and, in so doing, but hold or 
strengthen her supremacy. 

Victoria could recall men whose interests, put 
to crucial test, might prove sore trials. They 
would expect you to get beyond yourself in an 
effort to meet their notion of you. 

Take that prosperous writer-chap, Aldrich, for 
instance. He would concede you preternatural 
strength of character and rigid faculty for re- 
solve, and feel altogether bad, if you didn't live 
up to it in just about the way his mother or his 
Miss Low had taught him you must. 


200 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Take the K. K. Direktor of the Operntheater, 
for instance. He would concede you possibilities 
of exaltation and self-surrender, combined, im- 
possibly, with self-discipline and self-supremacy, 
and expect you to live up to it, in just the oppo- 
site fashion. Which would be even harder! 

The Ober-Leutnant — she had almost called him 
her Ober-Leutnant — conceded you nothing and 
made you feel you were “ all to the good.” 

“ All to the good ! ” Victoria rolled the phrase 
in her fancy and liked it. It was the latest Amer- 
ican slang, caught from the newest American at 
the Pension table. 

There was plenty of Viennese slang, too, for 
hardy usage. But in the matter of preference in 
this respect, Victoria could think of no destiny, 
or history, in store for her, which could ever 
make her anything but American. 


14 


XVI 


BROADWAY AND ITS REVELATIONS; INCIDENTALLY 
THE CAF& MARTIN 

For Aldrich in America, the Great White Way 
was getting well ahead. It did not explain him 
to himself. He never ceased to feel foreign to 
it, to the extent that he had the impression of 
every human atom in its densest throng feeling 
the same way. But there were times when his 
soul spread a flat surface for the titillation of its 
picked lights, prickly as a needle bath. Impu- 
dently they blinked into the mystery of this great 
nation of which he was a unit. They had a way 
of inducing a frame of mind dangerously near 
to being poetic, and at the same time of flinging 
their taunt at poetry. That was one of the lone- 
liest things about this singularly lonely city. It 
bred a terror, unspeakable, of the very idealism 
it engendered in you. 

Into him the bulbs, white and red, of the Great 
White Way streamed their blended hypnotism, 
the which he had the instinct of fighting, as one 


202 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


stirred by brandy might fight the lure of an opiate. 
White, and red, and yellow, mingling ever again 
into white, they bore but emphasis into the shad- 
ows : and nowhere in the world were the shadows 
thicker than here, in the byways, where their trail 
faltered ! 

In their assertiveness Aldrich read a symbol- 
ism. They were a typical blaze, equalizing, ex- 
ultant. Since the published account of Victoria 
singing he had been buying the theatrical jour- 
nals, and those magazines which gave a third of 
their bulk to portraits of actors, singers, mum- 
mers. As with the lights, all talent was here 
blended into a single password for publicity. 
Inspiration, incapacity, the actual, the sincerely 
make-believe (that and the insincere, there being 
two kinds), the fake, simple and undefiled, ready 
to confess itself and pride in itself — all glared 
out along the darkness in the violent aggregate 
of flickers. In these journals, as along the Great 
White Way, photographic art patterned the dev- 
astation of a prairie fire, wherein poppies, and 
wheat, corn, cornflower, and garlic, burned to- 
gether in a spectacular flare of retouchings, and 
unpolished encomiums. 

Where was the pitiless night to swallow them 
all, just off the turn of a corner? 

Nor did Aldrich by vigilant perusal again find 
203 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


allusion to Victoria. In an article on “ Contem- 
porary Opera in America/’ however, he discov- 
ered mention of negotiations just closed with one 
Fraulein Minnelied, by “ special arrangement 
with the Royal Opera at Dresden.” Her Ophelia 
aria, of the Lubke Musicale, came before him 
vividly: its contrast with Victoria’s classic bal- 
lads. Intently he examined her accompanying 
full-page portrait. It was an attractive picture 
suggesting radical recent improvement, either in 
the woman portrayed, or in the photographer who 
portrayed her. 

But the Minnelied’s portrait and her incum- 
bency at the Metropolitan were soon forgotten. 
Aldrich was adhering to his plan of work, as the 
winter progressed. Somewhere in his mind was 
the ineffaceable conjecture of Victoria Furman 
bowing to the people of Vienna. Swaying like 
a poppy before that blithe multitude, whose blithe- 
ness was not of this New York. Singing before 
the Kaiser ! 

And she would regard it as her pinnacle to 
some day come to this New York — to some day 
sing in the great opera in this great, uncon- 
ciliating, crude, replete city. Her disapproving 
brothers, who were Sunday School superintend- 
ents, would come up from their local trading 
booths and hear her. And being utterly dazzled, 
204 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


they would be immediately reconciled. Victoria 
would doubtless teach them a lesson in condescen- 
sion : and yet, when he tried to picture it, he could 
not quite see her doing that. In his attempt to 
do so he saw reason for fearing that the positive 
antipathy of his mother and the negative disap- 
proval of Georgia Low, might trammel him with 
injustice to his own conception. Victoria Fur- 
man would not condescend with her brothers. 
She would not patronize them. She would sim- 
ply force them to accept her standards, whatever 
those standards might be. Always had she done 
that, more or less. 

For his part, he must look upon these thoughts 
of her, these uprisings of the animation and color 
she embodied for him, as mere digressions to his 
present purpose. What he must do was to get 
into his writing work as much as possible of this 
America, which had dried out of him in a half- 
dozen successive years of Europe. What he was 
resolved to do, while doing that, was to see as 
much as possible of Georgia, of whom he had 
never, since the first summer, seen enough. In- 
deed, the scant evolution of his friendship with 
Miss Furman did not even permit that young 
woman’s rational exclusion from purposes which 
mght otherwise have been to forget her. 

He had set about getting America into his 
20 5 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


writing by assiduous study of the things in New 
York which considered themselves most Euro- 
pean. In that which aimed at being European, 
you often sensed the dominant Americanism most 
strongly. America was a vital flavor, for in- 
stance, at the Metropolitan Opera; at places like 
Little Hungary; at the Cafe Martin! 

From any of these he carried home tangible 
warm substance for his pen to solidify, as it 
cooled, in the night-and-day spectacles along the 
streets. He assured Georgia that the Cafe Mar- 
tin in particular would be Godfather to what- 
ever of his should next succeed. 

By way of demonstration, he piloted her and 
Cecilia there for dinner one evening late in Jan- 
uary. In the beginning Cecilia had shuddered at 
the proposition. She had understood the place 
was a little “ off color,” she said. But Aldrich 
came back with his reply: who in the world was 
better equipped than they three to give the Cafe 
Martin the needed touch of respectability? They 
would add that to the cafe’s variegation, as thou- 
sands even more monotonous than they had not 
desisted from doing. As for Georgia, she never 
hesitated. She was, Aldrich declared, the ideal 
Bohemian : consummately she could traverse 
with a fellow the whole of Bohemia’s stickily 
painted region, with a due eye for its rainbow 
206 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


riot, and without so much as soiling the tip of 
her glove-finger. 

To Martin’s they posted, therefore, where Al- 
drich had seen to the reservation of a table which 
was a nucleus to the maelstrom. About them, en- 
compassing them on four sides, the turbulence of 
New York’s day seemed to have bloomed flowers 
for New York’s night, in aggressive petals of 
scarlet, tawdry, yet vibrant. There was much clash, 
and clatter, much restiveness, much vulgar, rapid 
consumption of the remarkably low-priced and 
excellent table-d’hote menu. Yet all, even to the 
last, were softened in the idealizing sense of lo- 
cality which enveloped the mood of a fair pro- 
portion of the diners. They were, many of them, 
visitors in New York, and they were at “ old 
Delmonico’s.” The acute consciousness of being 
there cast about them the spell which they gave 
forth again in measures of sparkle and vivacity, 
so compelling that its transience was betrayed. 

It was this transience which here, as frequently 
in New York, chastened the cheapness with a 
plaintive note for whomsoever might conjecture 
the bald, strenuous, American life, to which it 
was giving its moment’s breathing space. So 
many of this evening’s diners would return, on the 
morrow, to the city, town, or hamlet in Missouri, 
in Alabama, in Nebraska, and resume their quest 
207 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


for money, of noon-tides; and turn their hose 
upon their green grass plots at sunset-times, be- 
tween election seasons. They were allowing them- 
selves the foretaste now. They came to New 
York for that. And the saddest thing about this 
transient happiness in this good and reasonable 
dinner (with as much or as little wine as you 
might choose to buy) was their probable belief 
that the money they were seeking would even- 
tually make it permanent. 

In fine, it being for things like this that they 
wanted their money, once they got their money, it 
would be their characteristic American way to be 
quite beyond this, and things like it. The green 
garden lawn would in so many cases be so much 
bigger, requiring so many more feet of hose, that 
pretentiousness would be sore put to keeping pace 
with it. About the time some of them might 
properly and limitlessly enjoy their Martin’s, 
there would be the terrible developed conscience 
for the Waldorf-Astoria, or the St. Regis. 

Pretentiousness, in that riper stage where it be- 
comes exclusive, would unquestionably find the 
place vulgar. A natural doubtfulness hovered as 
a miasma about certain of the types dining at its 
tables. The country-beauty, coming up to town 
with pride in her fresh color, might here see com- 
plexions beside which the smoothness of her own 
208 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


would be as nondescript rose-leaf to glazed 
porcelain — miracles of luminous pink, once 
known only to Paris, but now a sign and assur- 
ance that the owners were no mere day visitors 
in regions of Manhattan. 

In allusion to which Aldrich remarked that, as 
with the automobiles which brought a proportion 
of them thither, there were every year revolutions 
of improvement: new and more compelling lus- 
ters were being discovered; fresher lacquers were 
being unearthed; whether in the laboratory of the 
chemist or the masseur, or the osteopathist, it 
was impossible to say ! Whatever it might be, it 
bloomed forth on God’s handiwork of woman 
as a wonderful handicraft of the woman’s manip- 
ulation, when dusk came out, and the lights went 
up. 

“ Not all of them, you see, are on to it,” said 
Aldrich, who had been putting it all into his un- 
dertone of comment during the meal. “ Some of 
them have plain pink-and-lily powder — six years 
behind the times. One or two welter in antedi- 
luvian scarlet, without gradations or high lights. 
Take, for instance, the young woman just enter- 
ing, with the stout man. She looks as if she 
might have been berouged in Magdeburg in 
Saxony.” 

“ She might have been ! ” 

209 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Cecilia seemed like to burst with her excite- 
ment. “ Look closely. Isn’t that the Minnelied 
— or is it her double ? ” 

“ Fraulein Minnelied — the Frau Baronin Lub- 
ke’s pupil — of Dresden ? ” It was Georgia who 
put the query. 

“ She’s temporarily in New York, according 
to the operatic news,” explained Aldrich; “ had 
none of you heard? — and I think that is she.” 

As if to atone for the fact that they had not, 
and to make a certainty of all possible doubt, the 
Minnelied and her companion were given a table 
so close that Georgia’s cloak, thrown back of her 
chair, touched now and then the Dresden singer’s 
animated elbow. 

“ The people you’ve never dreamed of seeing 
again have a way of coming and sitting next to 
you. It always happens that way here,” whis- 
pered Aldrich. 

“ Everywhere,” smiled Georgia. 

“ And thus we’re always compelled to remem- 
ber just the people we’ve completely forgotten.” 

Aldrich elaborated it with one of his boy’s gri- 
maces. His dinner had progressed to the salad. 

“ Just to fancy it,” said Cecilia. “And she 
looked straight in our direction! She has no 
memory of us, at any rate.” 

“ She would have, though, if she’d ever had 


210 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


the pleasure of forgetting us,” said Aldrich. 
“ The pleasure of forgetting is unforgettable! ” 

In carefully guarded tones they were joking 
out the coincidence. Meanwhile, the Minnelied 
was chattering to easy earshot, in an apparent 
abandon of security in her German. Aldrich had 
the unwarranted sensation of her talking for their 
benefit — for their entertainment, indeed. 

“ Careful,” he heard her companion warn her. 
“ In New York are many who understand the 
language you are speaking.” 

“ I should recognize them,” retorted the Min- 
nelied. “ There are only good Americans 
around.” 

Good Americans — gute Amerikaner ! Her 
Saxon was a soft lisp on her words. The Min- 
nelied had come to America to pray, and would 
remain to patronize. 

Against his will, more and more, as stray 
phrases floated penetratingly out, Aldrich found 
himself straining nerves to catch them. His ob- 
sessed tendency to do so he might have combated, 
but unworthiness may be more than normally as- 
sisted by opportunity. There were fractions of 
time too propitious. Even now Cecilia was 
deeply absorbed in the selection of her ice. Geor- 
gia was having one of her far-away moments. 
To all appearance she was absorbing the sur- 


2 II 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


rounding medley with her inner vision. And, as 
if to end his struggle with diabolical concession, 
opportunity had moved the Minnelied to shift her 
seat until she half faced him, and her words 
reached him as distinctly as had those of the 
ladies of his own party. From the very start, as 
far as he could make out, she had been discussing 
her erstwhile sister-student, Victoria Furman. 

Her companion’s interest, too, was more than 
casual. When the narrative tended to close, he 
inserted the wedge of some quiet inquiry, and 
opened it again. 

She was retailing small gossip. With the mean 
sense of the eavesdropper, particularly vivid when 
we try to listen to things against our will to 
hear them, Aldrich made attempts at starting 
fresh drifts of wit and humor, at his own table. 
He succeeded, too, in moderation. But ever and 
anon strength flagged to the lull, whither pricked 
the little points of German chatter, his ears de- 
vouring them as they fought them off. 

“ Sehr verliebt ” — he heard her once say — 
“ very much in love ! ” 

This seemed to go with much previous refer- 
ence to some Austrian officer of the rank of an 
Ober-Leutnant, whom the Furman might “ buy ” 
(kaufen) if “ the old Ackern ” would only die 
soon enough, as seemed very likely. The Fur- 


212 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


man would surely get her money. It took twenty 
thousand gulden to marry an Austrian Ober- 
Leutnant and have him remain in the army. And 
unless he stayed in the army, there was no pos- 
sible advantage in marrying him at all. 

Aldrich had a notion that even Georgia must 
have caught the allusion to Fraulein Ackern’s pre- 
carious health — the one detail which would pos- 
sibly interest her. She gave no sign, but a 
shadow veiled her eyes. As he knew, there had 
been a time, years before, when Fraulein Ackern 
had especially singled her out for the devotion it 
was a necessity of her nature to bestow upon 
somebody. Georgia had accepted the spiritual 
part, and so must inevitably have her successors 
who would profit by the material. 

Not until he held Georgia’s wrap for her, when 
they arose to go, did he catch the final thrust. 
Distinctly he heard the Minnelied’s Saxon cleav- 
ing the babel: 

“ And you sent her four thousand marks ! Um 
Gottes Willen ! ” 

As unmistakably came the reply in crisp, quick 
well-bred American German : 

“ Philanthropy is the American vice. I and 
my brothers devote a certain amount each year 
to that kind of thing. Sometimes it makes you 
your singer ” 


213 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ And sometimes it doesn’t ” Aldrich 

must guess the finish of the sentence. They were 
on their way before it ended. 

Let it be understood that his eavesdropping, 
if such it must be considered, had been as adroit 
as the ordinary undertaking of the amateur. He 
had disguised it from both Cecilia and Georgia 
in the facility of his running comment, apropos 
of Martin’s, Manhattan, Missouri, the world at 
large. 

Or, if he had not done so — not quite — he was 
personally convinced that he had. 

His only reference afterward was a question 
put to the ladies on their way home. 

“ Did either of you,” he inquired, “ happen to 
note the gentleman who accompanied the Minne- 
lied ? Did you recognize him ? ” 

Neither of them had done so. 

“ I didn’t have a very good look myself,” he 
went on, “ but, if I mistake not, that was Jack 
Gorman, one of the millionaire Gorman brothers 
— the bachelor one. They are said to have an 
artistic as well as financial interest in the Metro- 
politan, and the Director sets much store by their 
judgment.” 

With a little gasp for the sensation of it, Ce- 
cilia began recalling: 

“ A connection of Ceddy Gorman’s — the man 
214 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


who bought up so many Kentucky mountains 
and built a French chateau in the middle of 
them ? ” 

“ His brother — in all probability.” 

“ Dear, dear ! — you exasperating boy ! Why 
didn’t you say so, at the time, and let us get a 
good look at him ! ” Cecilia’s distress was gen- 
uine. 

“ We couldn’t have walked around their table,” 
said Aldrich. “ And, for that matter — I didn’t 
get a good look at him myself.” 

Then something moved him to be suddenly and 
absolutely frank. “ Nor even a good listen,” he 
added, attempting to smile, “ though I tried to, 
mighty hard.” 

At the openness of this confession, Georgia 
knew a relief as from pressure. Her contribu- 
tion was a smile warm with undeniable gratitude. 
Unreasonably to the triviality of the thing, she 
had her sense of stepping into the open. 

“ Did the Minnelied drown him out ? ” she 
laughed, merely seeking speech after her silence. 

“ It would be interesting if she and Miss Fur- 
man should ever be imported to the Metropol- 
itan together,” he subjoined. But his words 
were far away, on his own lips. An abstraction 
was on him. 

“ Anyway, the Minnelied knows how to choose 

215 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


her escorts,” sighed Cecilia. “ Dear me, if I’d 
only had a voice.” 

In this there was nothing offensive — from 
Cecilia. 

And Aldrich had not heard it. 


XVII 


WHITE ILLUSION 

When the father she had lost at five had held 
his motherless baby girl on his knee, he had re- 
christened her after the nickname he had once 
given the wife. He had called her Georgia; and 
the name had clung, as names may, when they 
symbolize in their vowels and consonants some 
richness, or warmth, or softness, or repression of 
personality. 

But Georgia’s real name was Constance Mar- 
tha, and its existence she remembered, occasion- 
ally. There was in its legal substance some ir- 
revocable mandate. It confronted her sometimes 
like a superstition. Her friends might call her 
“ Georgia,” and dwell upon her youthful appear- 
ance. But she was Constance Martha, a spinster 
almost by profession. The real name was a sur- 
face of background for her, against which she 
projected her extraneous selves. It must remain 
her code, self-merciless, if necessary, at the su- 
preme moment. 


15 


217 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Her supreme moment had come — the test of 
all her ideal of womanliness, garnered in isola- 
tion, or in renunciation, or in such unselfishness 
as may lurk unostentatiously in cultured aims. 

The morning was the second after the even- 
ing’s dining at Martin’s. 

Open on the desk before her was a letter: a 
bulky missive of manifest studied coherence. It 
contained the proposition of all others she would 
have deemed it inexcusable in herself to imagine. 
Consistently, almost formally, but with genuine- 
ness and a maturity not quite like him, it ex- 
plained how and why the writer, Archibald Al- 
drich, desired her consent that he should make 
her his wife. 

That her heart should leap out at this was her 
humiliation: more — her Gethsemane. Brought 
face to face with destiny in the guise of this hap- 
piness she must reject, the woman knew a sudden 
tumult. It was resistless, at its height. The 
great hurt of it went through her. She bent low. 
Almost she touched the earth. 

The beacon light was a will-o’-the-wisp. She 
could but know the swampy blackness over which 
it hung, so like a star. 

Stifling, benumbing, there closed about her the 
proof that she had only been safe in the aloof- 
ness of her imagination : that through these writ- 
218 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


ten lines the security of her thought life, the very 
inviolateness of her selfhood, had been rent asun- 
der, without return, in the self-rev elation of hav- 
ing to relinquish the thing for which she would 
have shamed to hope. 

She had lived in a white illusion. 

Now Archie had asked her to become his wife. 
That was a supreme fact, rending the veil of her 
belief in herself, as a flash might intercept moon- 
light, making ugly what the softer radiance had 
made fair. 

“ My lad Archie/’ she had called him along the 
years. There had been a^,fcj|fre when he had 
kissed her cheek, as he had kissed- the cheek of 
his mother. The motor $nd the' Triend had 
smiled out at him together. And the mother 
had not known the friend: the friend had not 
known herself. Not even had'yshe dreamed 
herself. 

Dry-eyed she sat, staring at the written pages, 
the symbol of her impossible happiness, knowing 
these pages to be their own unconscious command 
of relinquishment. That was the fact she could 
not quite extricate. It was there, turgid, suffo- 
cating her remoter consciousness, somewhere, but 
she could not get it plain all at once. She could 
not formulate it. 

It was in her to make a systematic effort. De- 
219 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


liberately she read the letter through, word for 
word, syllable for syllable, a second time, a third 
time. She forced herself to note the maintained 
crispness of the chirography : the wide even spac- 
ing on the outer edges of the pages. 

Then she saw it all — so plainly that she must 
shiver with the misery of her clear perception. 
The directness of her intuition gathered about her 
like a chill. He had evidently been schooling 
himself for this letter for months. By his own 
admission therein he had planned to speak it 
rather than to write it. Perfectly she saw how, 
at the last moment, his enforced spontaneity could 
get no further than the writing. 

He had had a proposition to offer, which, in 
the turn of events, had struck him as an alterna- 
tive. Possibly even worse than that ! She 
winced with torture at the cumulative evidence 
that, in a way, he might have grown to look upon 
it as his duty. 

The scene at Martin’s, stamped upon her mem- 
ory in her excessive care of overlooking it, re- 
turned to make her understand the dumb suffer- 
ing he had undergone. That scene was the cli- 
max which had killed the remnant of his other 
hope. For every word concerning the singer in 
the city overseas, she had seen him grip back 
something he did not recognize or admit : some- 


220 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


thing he unceasingly believed he stifled, possibly 
did stifle at times, even from himself. 

Had certain facts never reached him, severing 
him, as he believed, from his dream, half-con- 
scious, sub-conscious, though that dream might be, 
the resolution which had carried him to this letter 
would have kept failing him to the end. That 
much she knew now. To that degree must her 
wretched understanding penetrate, thrusting, as 
with a rapier, even the consolation of magna- 
nimity. He was offering her that which not only 
had she not the smallest right to take, but that 
which he who offered must eventually despise her 
for taking. He did not realize — now. She was 
alone. For the little while in which he might 
fail to apprehend himself, she must realize for 
both. 

The clear contour of the trick of fate mak- 
ing puppet of him as of her — through his unac- 
knowledged despair of another as through her 
unacknowledged love of him — was outlined for 
her more and ever more pitilessly. She thought 
it might have been endurable had it left her with 
her self-respect. For she must comprehend to 
the full how, despite all her perception, it was 
yet leaving her — tempted. She clinched the 
crumpled sheets with trembling fingers. The sob 
came at last. 


221 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


In some way she reached her bedroom and cast 
herself upon her bed, and beat the pillows and 
held the sheets before her mouth to make mute 
her anguish. 

“ God — God,” she cried, “ why must I see — 
why must I understand! Why may I not be 
duped! What is renounced is uncompensated! 
God — God! Why may I not be a fool! Why 
may I not be a fool ! ” 

The afternoon came with a searching clearness 
of sunlight. A warmth had come out of the Jan- 
uary skies. From the sources of some perpetual 
summer, birds had dropped upon the boughs in 
the park. Such balminess, at such time when na- 
ture slept, had the deceptive glory of an awaken- 
ing, and seemed alert with twitterings. 

From the window of her room Georgia could 
catch a glimpse of the premature pageantry. Her 
crisis was over. The vague stirring toward new 
life came to her with the peace of that reaction 
mercifully ordained for all the suffering that 
may be endured by the children of men — or of 
God. 

Into the strip of blue-lighted nature seen diag- 
onally between her window curtains, she looked 
and smiled. The earth was having its flaunt of 
arch coquetry. This ogling sky and lambient air 


222 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


struck her as retrospective rather than prophetic. 
The earth looked back to its vanished springtide. 
It mimicked its youth, for an instant, in the spell 
of its recollection of youth. 

Then, with the thrill of it steadily descending, 
Georgia threw wide her window and gazed 
squarely at the undulance enfolding the world. 
Peace had swollen to the proportions of some un- 
accountable joy. It was as the echo of spring’s 
resurgence. 

Archie had begged her to let him make her 
his wife. That was the supreme fact now. And 
it had its radiance. Life seemed to turn back to 
meet it as it might have been met. She no longer 
harried the morrow or the solution. The mor- 
row might bring back its January sleet, its en- 
gulfing shadow, its leash of wan years. To-day 
it was being granted her to meet half-way the 
momentary smile of the hours. 

“For the eve’s a morn 

And the morn’s aglow,” 

she hummed to herself : some bit of one of 
Archie’s poems. 

With more than ordinary care she made her 
toilette, seeking to devise that shade in hat, par- 
asol, and gown which should least rebuke the 
223 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


afternoon’s misplaced glory. Archie had said he 
would be there at four. 

The sound of his knock, prompt to the minute, 
found her cloaked and gloved. He entered 
briskly, only to pause uncertainly just beyond her 
threshold. 

“ Just going out or coming in ? ” he asked. 

She met him with her smile unfaded. “ We’re 
going out together,” she said, and seemed gleeful 
at the plan. “ I’ll wager there’s going to be what 
any good American lad would call a ‘ peach of a 
sunset.’ After all, doesn’t that express it liter- 
ally sometimes? We’ll walk in the Park, instead 
of having stuffy tea by lamplight.” 

He looked down into her eyes. “ Jove,” he 
said, “ but you do look stunning ! ” 

“ Next thing you’ll be rudely asking me how 
I do it,” she teased. “ Come ! Let’s talk over 
nothing here. Every moment brings the dark- 
ness nearer. You have to catch an afternoon 
like this almost as it vanishes.” 

As they made their way out, he said in under- 
tone: 

“Are you not a little elusive yourself? You 
give me an uneasy feeling I may have to catch 
you as you vanish. There seem to be many you’s. 
This is a new one.” 

“ It won’t last. I should like to catch it, too.” 

224 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


She was still jesting, as it appeared. He 
walked beside her, seeking adjustment. 

Once in the Park, they sauntered slowly and at 
random. 

“ Speech eludes me,” Aldrich said, as they 
made winding way up a slope. “ But you know 
why I came, Georgia — dear ” 

He stammered. “ May I get to my point 
now?” He hurtled the words at fumbling res- 
olution, as the two of them paused, half-turning 
toward the distant rectangles of buildings 
glimpsed through haze and lacy twigs. She had 
seemed somehow receded, lost in the scene, in- 
tangible in the soft glow of the fast-waning 
day. 

All at once she turned blue eyes upon him. 
Their softness was shadowy. No light touched 
their moisture. She stood with her back against 
the West. 

“ What a dear, dear boy it is ! ” she said. 

He hung his head. Her words measured her 
remoteness. 

“ I thought you — you might understand,” he 
groped; “how, understanding each other as we 
do, there would be fulfillment in this way.” 
Speech strengthened with the rise of his words. 
“ You see, dear, you know my faults so well ; you 
have watched my incompleteness so long; you 
225 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


have seen my boyhood merely harden into a habit 
— instead of mellowing into the maturity which 
might have made me worthy of the things you 
once foresaw in me. You’d have no illusions 
from which to recover — if there’s anything in 
that!” 

Tears were in his voice now, and pleading. 
She caught the note of youth outliving itself, tired 
and vanquished, searching for refuge. Strength 
in her was added to strength. Meekly she smiled 
down the wild throb threatening the instant. In 
its place her heart found the Great Pity, and went 
out to him. 

They had started slowly onward, to half pause 
as they reached the top of the knoll. 

“ And you ? ” she said. “ From what must you 
recover, Archie, lad, to win back yourself? For, 
you know, you are temporarily lost, and you em- 
power me to make it permanent.” 

“ I think,” he answered, “ I think — I but em- 
power you to make me — happy.” 

“ Only wait,” she said. “ Wait — my vanity 
would say three weeks. My reason and intui- 
tion tell me three days. But because you are very 
dear to me, lad, I’m setting no limit. I’m saying 
good-by to you now, and I’m not sure it’s not for- 
ever. At any rate, it is for a long, long time. I shall 
not be here to-morrow. My little moment’s work 
226 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


here is accomplished. I shall head again for the 
Elsewhere — and you must let me do it, unpro- 
testingly. See ! The ways divide. I shall find 
my peace, perhaps even my happiness, as I have 
always found it. You must find yours as you 
haven’t quite found it yet — but something assures 
me it can’t be long. Go toward it, lad — as 
straight as you can ” 

“ Georgia ! ” 

She had fleetingly pressed his hand, and stood 
already in the farther path with the sunset still 
behind her. He was as one stricken; powerless 
to follow. 

“ Good-by, Archie — don’t forbid me that — at 
this moment. I ought at least to tell you how 
you’ve made the moment deathless. Good-by! 
Good-by!” 

The massed light of the yellow sunset stole 
through her hair, and he saw youth, even beauty, 
and magic sweetness. He saw the woman in the 
mirage of her exquisite girlhood, lost to him, as 
it seemed in the moment’s bitterness, merely be- 
cause he was born too late. 

Then she turned slowly and walked onward. 

The yellow faded. The dusk came glimmer- 
ing, enfolding her as she receded, until afar 
through the trees she was swathed in it as in a 
veil. The white illusion! For her only had it 
227 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


been rent asunder. For him, it was even now 
enfolding memory in thicker sheens of radiance, 
like a moonlit bridal-shroud. 

He choked down a sob; then strode back to- 
ward the city lights. 


XVIII 


THE PLAYWRIGHT, AND THE CALIFORNIA STAR 

Two interesting things marked the slow drag- 
ging of Aldrich’s lonely spring in New York. 
Of these the first was the acceptance of the play 
he had done during the winter, by a manager 
with a California imported Star and a prema- 
turely vacated playhouse. Aldrich’s play was hur- 
riedly rehearsed, and, from the author’s stand- 
point, carelessly put on. To the astonishment of 
everybody, however, it “ made good ” — reason- 
ably, for a piece-out production of late March. 
The California actress aroused discussion. Her 
methods went to the physiological, if not the 
psychological, root of things. They branded 
Aldrich as a scarlet realist. 

Originally, he had been innocent of such in- 
tention. He had thought merely to present the 
average eternal struggle between mind and mat- 
ter, the mind being a woman’s and the matter 
one man’s money and another man’s position, 
with a few radio-active conventions as chemical 
precipitant. He had believed he could do it all 
. 229 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


with nice discrimination in the way he brought 
it all about. He had planned that this discrim- 
ination should give his work the character of a 
fine, if rather pessimistic, satire: a sort of tragic 
comedy which should be true life — plus analysis 
and atmosphere, which should be Archibald 
Churchill Aldrich. 

A very few rehearsals with the California 
actress soon proved the hopelessness of his own 
ideas of his own play — in her hands, at any rate ! 
In some way known only to herself, she managed 
to make his epigrammatic first two acts a sort of 
insipid feeder for an outsoaring suggestiveness at 
the climax of his third, a colossal hysteria with 
broken furniture at the end of the fourth, and a 
bedimmed reaction into a holy-of-holies, chastened 
womanhood with gray cashmere, for his close. 

In fact, she compelled certain alterations in 
the fifth act to make logically plausible the per- 
fect impossibility of the change. Her demands 
were autocratic, backed by the afore-mentioned 
manager, who had come out of the West with her. 
Aldrich might change his play or not, just as he 
liked, they declared. If he didn’t care to, they 
would revive “ L’ Article 47,” and special mati- 
nees of “ Camille.” 

It was Aldrich’s first play. He subsided phil- 
osophically. Indeed, he worked with something 
230 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


like enthusiasm along the new lines. If they 
must smear paint and gilding over his polished 
mahogany, he could at least assist in the daubing. 
He, therefore, proceeded with fervor. Into him- 
self, wherever he detected himself in his lines, he 
drove his blue pencil like some fanatical suicide, 
with nine lives, digging a stiletto into hypothet- 
ically vulnerable spots. 

He had his reward in the smiles of the Califor- 
nia actress and her manager. The latter slapped 
him noisily on the back every time he reduced the 
heroine’s intellect from a paradox to an exclama- 
tion point. That lady herself beamed upon him 
as an angel of light, on those occasions where he 
would cut out her crispest epigram and direct a 
catch-breath sob. The quick rehearsals went 
with a remarkable smoothness. 

Encouragingly the manager had assured him 
he was “ getting along,” “ catching the hang of 
the business,” etc., and the first night, though in 
no sense a social, nor yet an epoch-making, nor 
even an uncriticised occasion, proved a certain 
truth for these statements The play stayed out 
the four weeks allotted to it. Arrangements were 
completed for giving it a return engagement and 
a chance of a winter run, next season, after it 
should have seen a few weeks of the road, — for 
improvements were still seen to be possible. The 
231 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


star had made an essentially personal impres- 
sion. Her attenuated beauty, original methods, 
and deep bass voice, had been the theme for con- 
siderable argument, if not unanimous approval. 
The attention she attracted had quite snowed 
under the supporting cast, a fact less deplorable 
than it might have been had the cast in question 
been less woe-begone. Incidentally it had snowed 
under the author, too. In consideration of cir- 
cumstances the author was not without his grati- 
tude that it had. 

The manager opined that all subordinate char- 
acters ought to be still more cut down, and the 
star part enlarged with whatever was good in any 
of them. Aldrich yielded carte-blanche liberty: 
star and manager, together, might decide on any- 
thing they saw fit, during the road tour. The 
author left them free to make any curtailment, 
enlargements, or other alterations that might 
show up as advisable on the journey; and com- 
fortably reflected that the play bid fair to get 
back to New York next year, a monologue for the 
star, with lay figures as a concession to vividness. 
He didn’t mind. He’d had his fun at that phase 
of it. 

If this had been an enlivening experience, it 
was yet less so than its main outcome, which he 
set down as event No. 2, in his exclusive calendar. 


232 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Event No. 2 was a letter, from Victoria Furman 
at Vienna : a letter as characteristic as it was sig- 
nally unexpected. 

She re-introduced herself with his play, and 
dismissed it in her opening sentence. She had 
read of it, and rejoiced; and she wished to assure 
him that she wished him to know she rejoiced. 
That ended that part of it; and Miss Furman 
used up some eight more pages, down one side, 
across another, in, out, and skip again, to a 
new sheet. (A woman’s plan of getting over 
note-paper may be not unlike a rabbit-chase across 
lots. ) 

She was moving along, she said. Her debts 
were being checked off, slowly but surely, and 
she was singing more frequently, though not yet 
often, in the opera. Not before had Aldrich re- 
ceived any intimation (from Miss Furman her- 
self) that there were any debts. Her frank 
mention of them, as to one who knew all about it 
already, so suggested a way out of certain impres- 
sions he had permitted to grow upon him, unrea- 
soningly, that Aldrich felt a buoyance — a sudden 
removal of some great weight. 

Her words were a solution. He knew that 
were he in her presence at that moment, she 
would, offhandedly, reveal the whole mystery of 
rumors concerning sources of her income while a 

233 


16 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


vocal student in Dresden. He had never given 
such rumors the slightest attention. Yet there 
had been a culminating night when he had eaves- 
dropped upon one of them, and the most insistent. 
And now, between her lines, she seemed to invite 
him to listen to it all, some day, when there should 
be another unforgettable stroll like that one in 
the Waldpark. Between her lines he could read 
the simple fact that, having had a fixed purpose, 
she had borrowed money here, there, and else- 
where; and that now, having carried out her pur- 
pose — she was paying it back. As she had bor- 
rowed from others, so had she borrowed from 
one of the Gorman brothers : undoubtedly 
through some intervention of parties in a position 
to vouch for the promise of her talent. The loan 
had surely never been made otherwise. She 
would pay back this money, along with the rest, 
if indeed she hadn’t done so already. Aldrich 
saw it all, and with more justice of intuition than 
generally goes to the credit of his sex. The Gor- 
man brother was making the most of his bounty, 
as his careless comment with the Minnelied indi- 
cated. But Aldrich found it difficult to forgive 
himself for having lost sight of the evidence that 
this millionaire had probably never so much as 
laid eyes on the object of his assistance. In the 
pain of having to overhear proof of what he had 

234 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


refused to believe, Aldrich had overlooked that 
side of it. 

Victoria’s letter had yet other intimations. She 
was “ coming on,” she repeated, but “ only in a 
way.” She was just as puzzled, just as unde- 
cided about many things, as ever. Her brothers 
had written, as Aldrich had predicted they would, 
and assured her of their pride in her and their 
hope that she would not permit her great success 
to interfere with being a good girl. “ They have 
ceased to doubt that I am anything else,” she 
wrote, “ and just when I try to decide whether I 
am or not — just when it’s hardest to make up my 
mind whether I ever really have been or not. 
Sometimes I think a business like this of being on 
the stage could never have confused a woman 
who hadn’t it in her, originally, to be attracted 
by it — sometimes I think that might mean a great 
deal that wasn’t just as it ought to have been.” 

The sentence was cryptic enough. It might 
have meant many things, but Aldrich thought he 
saw, among them, just what Victoria Furman had 
meant. In any but her such words would be the 
things convention must consider unsaid. But he 
could close his eyes and hear her saying them: 
and then he could perfectly understand. 

Miss Furman ended her letter, barring the 
postscript, with a devout wish that his work, or 
235 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


study, or play, might bring him some day to 
Vienna. Then he might see for himself just 
what a poor excuse of an artist she still was, and 
maybe help her to locate the trouble. 

Her postscript made mention of the fact that, 
as she understood, his two friends, Miss Low and 
Miss Whiteside, had swung back to Blasewitz; 
Miss Low being, just now, the guest of Fraulein 
Ackern, and Miss Whiteside at the old Pension 
Schramm. 

Though Aldrich knew of these things through 
his mother, it was agreeable to get them over 
again in such unexpected fashion. A line came, 
too, at last, from Georgia; merry and impersonal, 
apropos of his play. Cecilia and Herr Adolf, 
she said, were getting along capitally on some re- 
arrangement. She had reason to hope now that 
all might eventually be well in this matter, and 
was more than glad, for Cecilia’s sake. She re- 
lated how she herself happened to be at the 
Ackern villa, around the corner. Fraulein Ack- 
ern was in distressingly poor health, and a state 
of pathetic yearning for constant companionship. 
She would leave with her shortly, for the Ost-see, 
having promised her that much. But she hoped 
to put in the better part of her own summer wan- 
dering in Norway, a thing she had been promis- 
ing herself for years. All was as of old at the 
236 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Pension Schramm; Katychen was getting much 
taller and beginning to speak excellent English. 
Everybody inquired with real interest after “ the 
Herr Aldrich.” 

In this succession of greetings brought, by his 
insignificant success, from the other side, Aldrich 
found a comfort as near to joy as anything in his 
life’s experience. It was well-nigh perfect until, 
reactively, his contradictory loneliness came up 
and oppressed him. He was just at that moment 
in his career when the most heedless thing he 
could do would be to rush across the water. One 
or two managers of standing and import were 
hinting at plays. Appointments were reaching 
an endless chain for discussion of scenarios, tem- 
peraments, and personalities. The people it might 
be important for him to meet were drifting, one 
by one, into town; if only as birds of passage 
through it. He could not tear himself with self- 
respect from this richness of opportunity before 
the middle of June, and ere the middle of August 
it would be expedient that he should be back. 

In short, having written an American play — 
you might perhaps call it that — America was be- 
ginning to claim him. Fortune was making as 
if to ordain his localization. 

He hoped it might not be his labeling off. It 
might be approaching manhood. If so, it pinched. 

2 37 


XIX 


THE RIALTO AND MANHATTAN, WITH A DIS- 
COURSE ON OPPORTUNITY 

Toward evening of the sultry mid-May days, 
filled as to their mornings with writing, and as to 
their afternoons with rambling plan or preamble, 
in the society of manager, or actor, or publisher, 
Aldrich sometimes drifted out with the aimless 
current of the hour along the Rialto. 

The White Way had altered on his mind since 
the winter. Perhaps its own quality, which might 
be seasonal, had changed with the possibility of 
longer twilights and less sudden lusters. But 
there was something more than this : something 
untasted before, in the flavor of his relation to it; 
something, nowadays, of alternate sweet and bit- 
ter, driving him to impotent enthusiasms and re- 
bellions. Back against his hollow sense of alien- 
ation, swelled the trumpet call of his country’s 
miracle. In antiphony — cracked as a forespent 
bugle-note — came the echo of his country’s shal- 
lowness. 

In the mid-May twilights the Rialto dilated and 
238 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


contracted with perfervid languor. Its pedes- 
trians, now thronging and congesting, now thin- 
ning in semi-deserted stretches of sidewalk, were 
as visible corpuscles, coming and going in an ar- 
tery. He felt his hectic unison with the mighti- 
ness of that heart-beat which sent them hither and 
thither. 

And what vibrant, almost scintillant, red blood 
they were ! 

Was it a fusioned crimson from the nations 
which had fed it? Or, had the penetrant scarlet 
from the stripes wrought this wonder of color 
in a nation which looked not too obviously toward 
its stars? 

At all events, and whatever it might be, Aldrich 
could never cease to realize that these American 
people were, in their aggregate, superlatively 
beautiful to look upon. They were beautiful in 
a way unknown to older worlds over the seas. 
Their young women and their young men (and 
an astonishing number of their women and their 
men seemed young) were as wrought upon 
by some finishing touch, beginning at a point 
where beauty in France, in Germany, in Italy, 
would be deemed complete. Something had been 
added: a clearer sweep of line; a nimbler buoy- 
ance; a more resonant vitality. If there lived a 
real art-impulse among these people, then surely 
239 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


it had gone out in the cultivation of whatever 
you must see when you glanced at them. 

Someone had analyzed that American instinct 
for dress which so finds its source and center in 
New York, as a latent feeling for sculpture, di- 
rectly akin to the impulse of the Greeks. The 
interpretation was picturesque, though it did not 
quite account. Other explanations also did not 
quite account. That mere environment should be 
so universally productive of personality, looked 
incredible. Were his people saner or sincerer, 
Aldrich asked himself, and the question brought 
back the alternate, the bitterness which seemed to 
force him to his denationalization, hopelessly. 

From the penny-shows at every elbow-turn, to 
the musical comedy, the only dramatic art living 
full lung-power into the spring, there was the 
patent obverse. The expatriated American might 
have his exaltation at the spectacle, New York, 
and the vertiginous patriotism it sponsored. New 
York might be for him as any other wine, quick- 
ening superficial first pulses. But from beneath 
must recur for him the homesickness, perhaps 
ever induced by home to the homeless. 

This homesickness bid fair to become a film 
over Aldrich’s eyes. It froze his native exuber- 
ance; slowed his ready humor to something like 
drowsiness. He drifted on with the corpuscles 
240 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


along the Rialto artery, feeling himself the un- 
healthy particle said to be more or less indigenous 
to all circulation. His point of view must be 
unfair. He had so strong a derision for the shal- 
lowness, the cant, the insincerity, of so much of 
the national tendency, even while the national 
ideal repudiated these things — or seemed to re- 
pudiate them. 

In their very repudiation, he thought, was self- 
boastfulness, a bid for the same display. Spec- 
tacle — that was the German word, when you 
twisted the accent — Spectacle — you could not es- 
cape it ! It was round-about, round-about; in the 
flawlessly planned beauty of the women; in the 
calculated Greek-ness of so many of the men; 
round-about, round-about — like Peer Gynt’s great 
Boyg! 

This was the Rialto of Manhattan! Manhat- 
tan: where prosperity, in a thousand instances, 
met art half-way with pianolas and phonographs; 
throbbing symbols of the national spirit in that 
they were easy and mentally cheap and financially 
expensive. 

Manhattan : where virtue was so highly prized 
that every penny reporter was instructed to hand 
it out, thick-cut, and margarine-coated, as the only 
paying food for Sunday editions. 

Manhattan: where they would erect a tri- 
241 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


umphal arch to a National hero, one week, and 
fling mud at it (and the Hero, inclusive) the 
next; ere the official order might be made out to 
pull it down. 

Manhattan: where sentiment flourished with 
such rich appreciation that defunct chambermaid 
novelists were periodically resuscitated to resell 
their hundred thousand. 

Manhattan: where musical buffoonery might 
only be unchaste in due proportion to its imbe- 
cility, as an approved form of innocent relax- 
ation. 

Manhattan: where a half-dozen financial plun- 
derers might undergo a very public spasm of 
purity over some epoch-making creation of art — 
and having plundered the public enough for the 
right to dictate the aesthetic renunciations of the 
public, might order the epoch-making creation 
from the boards willy-nilly. 

Manhattan : where true goodness was so 
adored that true realism, that was to say true 
truth , was despised. If the public would not re- 
ject it, there were custodians of the public morals 
who would, and their power of censorship was 
more insolent, if more asinine, than that of any 
autocracy in the universe. 

Manhattan: where portable magazine litera- 
ture — 


242 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ Careful, careful ” he would warn him- 

self; and pull himself together. 

Then he would quiet himself, forcing mental 
admission that these thoughts must be unjust; 
that the denationalized artist, by the very nature 
of his craft, and his development, could not com- 
prehend the real tendency of this Manhattan, 
epitomizing the tendency of the American people. 

The strength of America defied analysis from 
the aesthetic standpoint. It was a strength like 
that of England — a strength founded on what it 
concealed, on what it was unconscious of having, 
or perhaps ashamed of having. Kipling had tried 
to define it for England, without quite succeed- 
ing. The artist who might try to define it for 
America would have an even slipperier task. At 
all events, Aldrich knew his own limitation. He 
would neither write the Great American Novel, 
nor the Great American Play. 

Meanwhile such publishers as he lunched with, 
at their clubs, were in effect clamoring for the 
one. And such managers as he drank with at 
their hostelries, had nebulous lofty theories of the 
other. They were confessedly in pursuit of the 
Great American Play, only it must not be too 
great to be quite conventional, and commonplace. 
They were first blood-cousins to the magazine ed- 
itors who wanted short stories absolutely fresh 

2 43 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


and original, and exactly like all the stories they 
had published before, were publishing now, or 
would publish in the future. The great Amer- 
ican nation, symbolized in Manhattan, had its 
watchword: imitativeness — universal and grega- 
rious. The man whose mental arrangement did 
not subscribe to the prevalent size, shape, and 
height in collars, was, generally speaking, as in- 
admissible in a factory as undesirable at a lunch 
counter. 

Truth to tell, Aldrich had met what popular 
parlance called “ opportunity,” and was finding it 
empty. Opportunity might, after all, be termed 
the clogging of personal impulse with existing 
demands. Opportunity had also a lively faculty 
for singling out the victim from the unwilling. 
It had a way of fettering the care-free whom it 
discomfited, and eliding the care-worn whom it 
might have consoled. In brief, opportunity was 
habitually inopportune. His present days, dull 
with activity, or thrilling with inanition, bore 
witness. 

He scoffed idly. Petty irritation is prone to 
weak logic. The Rialto, which displayed so 
much, concealed the blessing which lay in wait for 
him. 

Something in the eddy of its current brought 
Aldrich to the office of Brescio, when the mid- 
244 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


May was waning and warming. According to 
Rialto standards, Brescio was the greatest living 
producer of costume drama. 

The call was mediated through mere chance 
suggestion of one of Brescio’s assistants. It had 
interested Aldrich chiefly by reason of the oppor- 
tunity it gave for studying Brescio himself at 
close range. As an appointment it was, of 
course, scheduled in advance, elaborately. 

Aldrich found Brescio gazing at the top of an 
office desk, while his fingers raked his black hair 
from his forehead to the base of the neck, and 
slowly back again, to as slowly repeat the process. 

“ Ah — Mr. Aldrich,” said Brescio, by a divi- 
nation fathomless to the man addressed, since the 
speaker had failed to look up, and his abstraction 
had seemed to deepen rather than dissipate. 

The hand, however, ceased its raking at the 
hair, and went out absently to the visitor. 

Brescio arose as at second thought. Slowly he 
fixed eyes of tragic fire upon Aldrich, and the 
extended hand closed in a grip. 

“ Do let us sit down,” he said. “ No — not 
there ! Over here by the window, where we can 
get a glimpse of the outside. I’m always getting 
new electrical effects out of that three feet of sky. 
Mr. Aldrich, I happened to stumble in on your 
play — last half of third act, I think. I stayed 

245 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


through the act and even witnessed the next. I 
liked your play, sir. It had blood in it.” 

“ Very much so,” laughed Aldrich. “ Vm in- 
clined to think it needed a leech.” 

Brescio had little sympathy with the sense of 
humor which implied lack of deference before a 
sensation. His eyes veiled again. He had sup- 
ported his head on his left elbow; now the fingers 
of his right hand resumed their mechanical orbit 
from crown of forehead to base of brain. 

Brescio proceeded : 

“ I think we might be joint authors of a cos- 
tume comedy of manners, laid some time during 
the latter half of the eighteenth century. The 
nicest problem would be the selection of a locality 
which should most typify^ that epoch.” 

Aldrich had been well prepared that Brescio’s 
time was important. That was why he had his 
inspiration in a flash : 

“ Why not Vienna and the court of Maria 
Theresa ? ” 

Practically the whole story, this. The rest 
came as if oiled, or cut to measure. Other calls 
at Brescio’s succeeded the first. 

The close of the week saw an agreement put 
into legal form and signed by Forsyth Brescio, 
and Archibald Churchill Aldrich. The latter 
could foresee that this agreement, for all its le- 
246 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


gality, was distinctly loose. It offered an escape 
for Brescio if the play didn’t suit, and no escape 
for Aldrich if it did; and it was carefully designed 
to put the lion’s share of the thinking and the re- 
search on the writer-assistant; and to bring the 
calcium focus of credit and glory and (probably) 
of financial profit, to the author-producer. For- 
syth Brescio was one of those modernly preva- 
lent dreamers who are never caught napping. 

All this mattered nothing to Aldrich. No 
schoolboy permitted the privilege of cleaning 
blackboards ever found greater alacrity in his 
privilege. 

The play was to be ready for presentation one 
year from date. 

“ And that means,” Aldrich fairly sang to him- 
self, “ that we shall go to the old home-place in 
New Hampshire, and rest up a couple of months, 
and then in the early Fall get to old Vienna as 
fast as our portable legs can take us. We’ll get 
up a comedy that will warm Forsyth Brescio to 
his limit. We’ll study Schonbrunn and the box- 
trees, and we’ll have old red-heeled Haydn 
teaching his giddy young Marie Antoinette the 
clavichord, and hovering all around the prolific, 
beatific, politic Queen Mother Maria, and the 
courtiers with snuff, and the Fasching revelers, 
and the bel-cantists, with the Italian names, and 
247 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


their male sopranos warbling falsetto before the 
throne. We’ll even do the grewsome, and get a 
sensational fourth act, in the Capuciner vault 
among the coffins of the Kings. And old For- 
syth Brescio can have it all, but he can’t have the 
fun of going to Vienna and getting it up at lei- 
sure. He can’t have the joy of digging it out of 
the Praterstern and the Mariengasse and the 
Ringstrasse. He can’t — he can’t — because he’s 
one of opportunity’s slaves — and he doesn’t know 
what he’s missing ! ” 


XX 


IN WHICH MORALIZATION SUCCEEDS DECISION 

The changes which her first season of opera 
wrought in Victoria Furman were not external. 
They failed, apparently, in touching either her- 
self, or her impersonations. True, she fell easily 
into the Viennese jargon and altered her suffixes, 
saying “ Bissel ” for “ Bischen,” as did every- 
body else. She adopted the offhand “ Servus ” 
when she greeted those army officers and intimate 
new acquaintances for whom she had no greeting 
in particular; and she let herself be victimized by 
the promiscuous hand-kissing of janitor, maid- 
servant, and messenger-boy. Yet despite all this 
she retained, or appeared to retain, her emphatic 
novitiate. 

Once she had gone to the Lubke, humbly pre- 
pared to observe and learn what she could of the 
art of singing. Her modesty should have been 
commended, but the way of looking at it had kept 
her, to the last, more than averagely dependable 
upon the Lubke’s disposal of any question per- 
taining to her work. In like manner, being now 
249 


17 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


in Vienna, Victoria was resolved to take in what 
she could of the business of being a singer. Such 
a standpoint may be so detached as to remove it- 
self from the sphere of the very thing by which 
it seeks to be influenced. Victoria was learning 
much without being able to congratulate herself 
on getting much farther. 

Her work at the Operntheater, as she informed 
Aldrich in her letter, was kept insignificant. She 
could see that in the Direktor ’s eyes she was that 
sort of ordinary disappointment he had schooled 
himself to get used to, and to make the best of. 
Her contract had designated her as first Altistin, 
which meant that she might be cast for any or all 
of the great contralto roles, if the Direktor so 
desired. Since it was for this apocryphal con- 
tract that she received pay, and since the pay had 
to be increased each year, the Direktor conscien- 
tiously made use of her, casting her for any little 
role that didn’t matter, and once in a while giv- 
ing her a chance at her Amneris, in an evident 
spirit of scientific investigation. 

Twice during the season — once in the winter, 
and once in the spring — the opera for which the 
Lubke had trained her longest and most exhaust- 
ively was put on the boards, and she was per- 
mitted to appear in Meyerbeer’s “ Prophet.” 
After a fashion these two performances main- 
250 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


tained her prestige. On both occasions the Ka- 
pellmeister sought her out behind the scenes for 
encouragement and congratulation. At the sec- 
ond presentation, as at the first, he expressed his 
surprise that she “ had it in her ” to sing like that. 
It was not the least of Victoria’s trials that every 
time she sang at all well, every one seemed sur- 
prised afresh to think she had “ it in her.” 

Toward the wane of the season, her American 
friends in the Pension had a way of assuring her 
that she was, if anything, more American than 
when she had first arrived. They meant to com- 
pliment. Victoria accepted the flattery gra- 
ciously. Truth to tell, she was not altogether dis- 
pleased at it, though it might seem to hint at her 
inflexibility, if not her stupidity. She could at 
least keep very American as long as there were 
any Americans about. There was, in this, a sort 
of technique not unlike other kinds of technique 
she foresaw she must acquire through some mode 
of life, and thought, and feeling yet to be re- 
vealed. 

Moreover, though her awkward aspect might 
not betray, she herself knew well enough the ve- 
locity of alteration in her undercurrent; even 
though it but deepened and widened the channel 
of what she had been from the first. Exactly 
putting it, she knew that beneath the surface she 

251 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


was already considerably changed, if only through 
being as she had always been, so much more than 
ever. 

Victoria had never scrupled, though she may 
have hesitated, before the pro and the con. As 
the one had never dazzled her, so had she never 
been frightened by the other. She now looked 
at her problem, whatever it might be, with even 
greater simplicity. Her indecisions themselves 
were resultant to her temerity in looking at 
things as they were, stripped of their embel- 
lishment. Conventionality, disguising a thou- 
sand facts, has a far directer road than naked 
truth seeking to circumvent its half-dozen is- 
sues. 

Victoria, therefore, accepted a recent onslaught 
of proposals of marriage, from the Ober-Leut- 
nant von Zonsk, with equanimity. The Ober- 
Leunant was apparently ready to give up his post 
in the Austrian army at any time, and, for all 
Victoria knew to the contrary, become her pen- 
sioner whenever she might direct. What his 
financial situation was she did not exactly know. 
But she was reasonably certain he was reasonably 
poor, and she had, for herself, the invariable an- 
swer regarding him : if she should ever want him 
at all, she would want the officer part as well as 
the rest. The Ober-Leutnant remained her baf- 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


fled but not discouraged suitor. Victoria admit- 
ted to herself a great uncertainty as to how it 
might terminate. 

Perhaps the best defined episode of the season 
was the apotheosis of the Graf von Liidersberg, 
whose fortunes were materially and suddenly 
altered through the death of a childless and 
landed uncle in Schlesien. Once again the Graf’s 
limitless family connection profited him in making 
him heir to an estate. As a youngster, he had 
squandered two — to their dregs. It might turn 
out the same this time, but chances were against 
it. Many better-regulated and economical years 
had since elapsed to routine him in fore- 
thought. 

As soon as possible the Graf honored Victoria 
with a formal frank proposition, which, after a 
fashion, increased her respect for him, though it 
brought his annihilation — and at his zenith, so to 
speak. The Graf’s proposal was not one of mar- 
riage — Victoria had half-feared it might be — but, 
as he expressed it, bore relation to her debts and 
financial embarrassment generally. 

Her salary was absurdly insignificant to her 
needs, said the Graf. Many times she had admit- 
ted as much to him. Might he not, merely as a 
friend, be permitted to settle twelve thousand 
gulden a year upon her? 

253 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ For what?” Victoria replied, thoroughly 
comprehending, and rather amused. 

“ For your friendship,” said the Graf. 

“ My friendship ” 

“ I have never been anything more than a mere 
outsider,” said the Graf. 

“ And now the Herr Graf must be even less 
than that,” explained Victoria. 

The Graf looked aggrieved; or, it might be, 
angered — like the worm turning. 

“ Am I too sudden?” he questioned. “But, 
perhaps, some day I might wish to make you a 
Grafin — who knows? ” 

“ That would be wonderful of you,” said 
Victoria. 

“ Never mind,” pursued the Graf, with cumu- 
lative intensity, in growing dread of failure with 
a full hand. “ You are American. You will not 
care for being a Grafin, perhaps. Then you need 
not be, you need be nothing you do not wish! 
My interest has always been fatherly. I should 
like to see you free from anxiety ” 

“ From now on I shall be so — quite,” said 
Victoria. 

The world of the K. K. Hofoperntheater, to 
which she belonged, was one which scoffed at 
anger over situations like this. Her intuitions 
had prophesied far too much for any loss of tern- 
254 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


per — even any great surprise. But she had her 
anticipated opportunity for dismissing the Graf 
and assuring him, very earnestly, that he must 
make his absence permanent. 

“ The saddest thing about saying farewell to 
some people,” sighed Victoria, when he had gone, 
“ is the great likelihood of seeing them again.” 

She was not offended certainly. He had been 
laboring under a misapprehension. This was the 
first definite opportunity he had ever given her of 
putting him to rights. 

Three weeks after his extinguishment, there 
reached her a privately distributed rumor that the 
Graf von Liidersberg was lodging Fraulein 
Mikuli (freshly engaged at the opera from the 
Vienna Conservatory), in magnificent apart- 
ments. Fraulein Mikuli was barely nineteen, 
but, as an artist, remarkably developed. Against 
all precedent, with one so inexperienced, she was 
even now being cast for Elizabeth at all the per- 
formances of “ Tannhauser.” It was predicted 
that she would be a favorite Lottchen in Mas- 
senet's “ Werther ” next season. 

“ A singer,” Victoria reflected, “ must learn 
her role from a very soiled prompt-book, though 
she vocalize a spotless character before the foot- 
lights.” 

Then she wondered whether a singer might 
255 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


permit herself the privilege of being heartless at 
command, until she had mastered having a heart 
full to order. She had the misgiving that it 
might be necessary to overlook many kinds of 
sincerity, in a business so dependent upon effects 
in the opposite quality. 

These things were an echo from the new life 
which was appearing to change her so little. 
They were tentative, mildly speculative — experi- 
ments in incandescence, not in the least dangerous 
if they but played over the soul of a fire-proof 
woman. 


XXI 


POISON WITH HOMEOPATHIC ANTIDOTE, AND 
HEROIC CURE 

The name Miss Cecilia Whiteside was deliv- 
ered orally to Victoria one morning by Frau 
Heincke. 

“ She come to my Pension and will look for a 
room/’ explained the Frau, “ but my Pension is 
full. I tell her about how we have a hof-opern 
singer in my Pension, and she ask me if it is Miss 
Furman, and I say ‘ yes, how did you know ? ’ ” 

“ Well ? ” inquired Victoria. 

“ I have no room, but the lady say she know 
the Miss Furman and will not intrude. But may- 
be the Fraulein will speak with her and give ad- 
vice ” 

“ Then she’s still on the premises ? ” said Vic- 
toria. 

“ She will not intrude, but she was waiting in 
the salon if the Fraulein Furman will speak to 
her.” 

The Frau Heincke tiptoed nearer and whis- 
pered : 


25 7 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“Is she all right? For if she is a friend of 
yours I will find to her a room. She come to my 
Pension without letters at all, but I find a room 
if she is a friend.” 

“ Oh,” laughed Victoria, “ she’s all right , all 
right ! At least, I know nothing to the contrary. 
And we know several of the same people. I guess 
you might as well show her in.” 

“ This is an unwarranted imposition,” gushed 
Cecilia, at Victoria’s threshold, a moment later. 
“Just fancy — I hadn’t the remotest idea you 
could be seen. It is so good of you.” 

“ Not at all,” Victoria declared with unas- 
sumed good nature. “ Glad to see you. You 
come direct from the Schramms, I suppose? ” 

“ You would never have expected me, of all 
people,” surmised Miss Whiteside, accepting the 
edge of a seat. 

Victoria admitted that she never would have 
dreamed it. 

“ No doubt we Americans crowd on you, until 
you have to make rules to protect yourself,” said 
Miss Whiteside. “ I suppose fame has its dis- 
advantages.” 

“You mean I have a great many callers?” 
Victoria shook her head. “ You might think I 
would, but, on the contrary, I have very few. I 
really wish there were more.” 

258 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ Just fancy ! ” Miss Whiteside was genuinely 
astonished this time. For once the exclamation 
fitted. 

“ I fear all my fellow-countrymen are all of 
them thinking just as you thought,” pursued Vic- 
toria. “ Each of them thinks there must be a lot 
of others, and stays away from me out of con- 
sideration.” 

“ Dear me,” gurgled Miss Whiteside, settling 
a little further back in the chair. “ The first 
thing I know you’ll be making me think of this 
imposition as a favor.” 

“ Why, it’s no joke,” said Victoria. “ Any- 
one does me a favor who breaks in on the 
monotony.” 

She was exaggerating, in crescendo, in the fer- 
vor of having been compelled to do so a little, in 
the beginning. The forced dissembling of a mo- 
ment easily grows on a woman for several. 

“ That ought to be inclusive,” began Miss 
Whiteside, in a threatened new fidget of uncer- 
tainty. 

“ You’ve chosen the most uncomfortable seat 
in the room,” interrupted Victoria. “ Do take 
the German rocker.” 

Cecilia protested, but eventually did as she was 
bid. “ My, my ! ” she said, sinking far back until, 
through the misadjustment of its size to her stat- 
259 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


ure, her diminutive feet (they were only propor- 
tionate, but she was very proud of them) were 
lifted from the floor. “ What a wonderful chair. 
It’s like a steamer chair on springs.” 

“ If you were but a singer in the opera here,” 
said Victoria, “ you might sit and rock in it all 
day. When did you come ? ” 

“ I came on from Prague last night. I’d 
stopped a day there,” said Cecilia. “ What a hor- 
rid town ! There was nothing in it but a bridge.” 

“ So you left Dresden day before yesterday. 
How were they all ? ” 

“ Don’t ask me after that stupid place,” im- 
plored Miss Whiteside. “ I’m most awfully tired 
of it.” 

Victoria could be very dull when it seemed use- 
less to be otherwise. “ Oh, I wasn’t asking after 
Dresden,” she said. “ Doubtless the old place is 
just the same, with the bridges and bath-houses. 
I was just wondering how they were: Katychen 
and the rest of them out at the Pension. And 
you must see Fraulein Ackern sometimes. Would 
you believe it, I’ve hardly laid eyes on her this 
blessed winter ! ” 

“ Just fancy! Yes — I’d understood you 
hadn’t. How did it happen? ” 

“ Nothing happened,” replied Victoria, with a 
quick eye for the inference that something must 
260 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


have. “Of course, we’ve written heaps of let- 
ters back and forth. Then I meant to go over 
and spend a week at the Villa, Christmas, but they 
were rehearsing the new Puccini, and, though 
I had only a villainous six notes in it, they 
wouldn’t give me leave-of-absence. So Fraulein 
Ackern came over here instead. We tried to 
make her comfortable, but, poor thing! she was 
sick the entire time, and couldn’t be persuaded 
to stay but two days.” 

“ What a pity ! ” Cecilia’s sympathy might 
have been either for Fraulein Ackern or for 
Victoria. 

“ Since then I’ve planned to run over and see 
her, a dozen times at least. But something al- 
ways happened. If you’re not singing much at 
this opera here, and want to, just plan to do some- 
thing else and ask for Urlaub ! ” 

Miss Whiteside had removed herself to a re- 
mote field of cogitation, from which she signaled 
with another “ It’s a pity ! ” — this time absent, 
and reflective. 

“ Yes,” admitted Victoria. “ But it couldn’t 
be helped.” 

“ You know, of course,” ventured Cecilia, 
“ that she’s taken a most violent fancy to Georgia 
Low.” 

“ She always liked her,” said Victoria, resolv- 
261 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


ing at the same time to display none of the in- 
terest she began to feel. 

“ A peculiar character,” mused Miss White- 
side, more for herself. “ A peculiar character — 
this Georgia Low. I’ve never pretended to un- 
derstand her.” 

“ They must have fallen out,” Victoria con- 
cluded, and was attentive. 

“ She has her good points, of course,” Miss 
Whiteside went on with an increasing sense of 
latitude, “ but — well, you know, really, I think 
she ought to marry. She would be so much 
happier.” 

“ They have certainly fallen out,” thought 
Victoria. 

“ As it is, she’s not happy at all, poor Georgia ! 
— and she’s just a little — ah, well, it seems dread- 
ful to say it — but you remember that old fable of 
the ‘ Dog in the Manger ’ ? ” 

Victoria remembered it. 

“ That’s Georgia Low ! ” The time had come 
for Miss Whiteside to tighten her lip with 
decision. 

“ I know whereof I speak,” she proceeded. 
“ She’s quite well-to-do, you know, and she 
doesn’t spend half her income, as far as anyone 
can see. And yet, she’s simply determined that 
Fraulein Ackern shall will everything she’s got to 
262 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


her. It’s common talk at the Pension. Why, 
she's been devoting every moment of her time to 
her, for over a month now. And at last she's 
gone off to the Ost-see with her, where the poor 
old thing will be absolutely under her influence." 

“ It’s a cold summer," said Victoria. “ They’ll 
surely freeze." 

But Miss Whiteside was abstracted again, with 
a philosophical effort. “ It does seem," she said, 
with careful deduction, “ it does seem — doesn’t 
it? — that when a woman doesn’t marry before a 
certain age, she invariably becomes grasping." 

Victoria began to be a little put to, for just 
the best method of receiving the revelations being 
laid before her. She compromised on an indif- 
ference made easier by the type of her interloc- 
utor. 

“If she can cut any of us out with Fraulein 
Ackern," she said, “ she’s welcome to, I’m sure." 

Foreign to the topic in hand was Miss White- 
side’s little “ oh ’’ at that moment. From leaning 
forward to the significance of her disclosures, she 
had reclined into her chair again with a sudden- 
ness which had caused it to rock violently, the 
while her colliding picture-hat was tilted forward 
over her nose. 

“ Take it off," said Victoria. “ Do. Why 
not stay to lunch ? " 


263 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ I really think I shall have to,” said Miss 
Whiteside, removing a hatpin, “ and fix it on be- 
fore the glass ! But you’re too good, really. In- 
deed, I must not stay to luncheon. That would 
be presuming on good nature.” 

“ Give it to me,” said Victoria, appropriating 
the beflowered headgear. “ Now, get comfort- 
able, and do go on. It’s not often I hear any- 
thing really interesting like this.” 

“ I don’t know why I’m speaking so freely,” 
said Cecilia. “ It’s a shame to impose on you and 
inflict you. But in these few moments I feel al- 
most as if I’d known you always.” 

“ People often feel that way with other people 
— at any rate, until they know them better,” said 
Victoria. 

“ It’s really quite strange,” marveled Cecilia. 
“ It’s my nature, you know, to be very reserved. 
But you just make me feel how long a time ” 

“ Oh, we’re old friends,” interrupted Victoria. 
“ You were talking of Miss Low.” 

Recalled to her subject like this, Miss White- 
side could perceive no indiscretion in further dis- 
closures concerning it. “ It’s a shame,” she de- 
clared. “ I’ve said from the start it was a shame 
for you not to have Fraulein Ackern’s money. 
She always meant you to have it, of course. I 
think it’s simply robbery.” 

264 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ Not quite that bad,” Victoria corrected. 
“ They can't gag and throttle her — not any more 
than I can. She’s got a will of her own, you 
see.” 

“ Oh, but, my dear, you don’t know that 
woman, that Georgia Low. No one can know her 
as I do. Why, I’ve given up my time to her as I’ve 
never given it to anyone else. For two years past 
my very life has been hers. I’ve let her drag me 
about, from Europe to America, where she fol- 
lowed that young Aldrich — (what she saw in him 
I can’t imagine — I always thought him the worst 
sort of an it !) — and then back to Europe again, 
when she gave up trying to get him. And what 
was her gratitude? How did she repay me ? By 
turning my friends against me. There was a 
particular friend of mine in the Pension — maybe 
you’ve met him — his name was Adolf — Herr 
Adolf?” 

“ I met him once, I think with Miss Low,” said 
Victoria. 

“You see!” Cecilia acclaimed her exult- 
ance in a proven point. “ That was the be- 
ginning. That was when I first had my eyes 
just a little opened and began to understand 
Georgia better. But I didn’t yet fully compre- 
hend. I couldn’t, you know. I loved Georgia 

too deeply. I ” 

18 * 265 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Miss Whiteside’s voice stuck in her throat. A 
tear began to indent a groove into her powder. 
It was daintily intercepted by a tip of filmy pocket 
handkerchief. 

“And now,” Miss Whiteside proceeded, with 
self-control, “ she has in some way ended the 
friendship between myself and Herr Adolf. How 
she has done it I’ve no idea. Georgia has always 
been quite beyond my comprehending. You can 
never find out her methods. Just when you think 
you have your finger on them they escape you. 
But Herr Adolf took to acting strangely distant 
toward me, for no reason whatever. And now 
he has gone off and left the Pension, and Georgia 
has gone off with Fraulein Ackern and left me — 
deserted me ” 

The tear was intercepted again in the opposite 
eye, to leave a tiny red rim of emotion. 

“ Of course, she did it some way. How, will 
never be known. I don’t think she really wanted 
to marry him? But ” 

“ I see,” said Victoria, whose interest had 
lagged at this part of the narrative. “ But I 
wouldn’t worry over this Adolf, if I were you. 
Remember, he’s only one fish in a world-wide 
puddle.” 

“ Oh, but you can’t fish everywhere,” moaned 
Cecilia. 


266 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Conscious of endangering her dignity, she was 
upright in a moment. 

“ You don't just understand," she said, adjust- 
ing her neck-band as she straightened herself. 
“ It's not Herr Adolf I'm so distressed about ! 
It's the treachery of a friend — one to whom I 
gave so much of my time — one to whom I gave 
so much of myself " 

“ But maybe she didn't do it. Is it proved ? ” 

Victoria was, at heart, far removed from this 
phase of the topic. She was trying to conjecture 
how much truth there might be in that other in- 
ference: that she had damaged her prospects in 
Fraulein Ackern’s will. 

“ Such things require no proof," Cecilia was 
saying. “ They may be seen with one's own eyes. 
I saw it coming last summer. She lured him 
then, openly, with every wile. Now he must go 
to the Waldpark, and now to the Central Bahn. 
But I think he must have seen through it. At all 
events it all stopped, all of a sudden. And such 
was my loyalty to that woman, that I made up my 
mind never to notice him again." 

“ That might have been better," Victoria noted, 
absently. 

“ It was my mistake." Cecilia deepened her 
voice. “ A man ne-ver forgives a woman for 
that.” 


267 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ Well, then, maybe that’s all the recent trou- 
ble — maybe he got to thinking about it and got 
sore,” said Victoria, who wished to be as sympa- 
thetic as she could. 

“ Ah, my dear ” 

Cecilia was beginning to feel thoroughly at 
home. She interrupted herself to arise and go 
to a hanging mirror for the purpose of adjusting 
a puff and a ringlet to more geometrical sym- 
metry. 

“Ah, my dear — all I can say is: you don't 
know her as I do ! ” 

“ For that matter, I don’t know her at all,” 
Victoria agreed readily enough. “ In the very 
nature of things, I probably never would. We 
weren’t at all the same style, you’ll remember, 
and would never have looked at anything the 
same way in a hundred years. All I knew about 
Miss Low was that Fraulein Ackern seemed to 
be very fond of her. I don’t think Miss Low was 
particularly enthusiastic about me; but I must ad- 
mit she always seemed to me to be a lady.” 

“ She manages to create that impression,” ad- 
mitted Cecilia. “ Oh — well — I suppose, leaving 
out the question of disposition and character, 
she really is ! Perhaps she can’t help her 
faults.” 

“ Some people can’t.” 

268 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ Just fancy ! But I believe you’re right. And 
these New Englanders are always more or less 
grasping, don’t you think? No matter how much 
they have already, they always want more. 
They’ll always get the better of you, if you don’t 
watch them, don’t you think ? ” 

Victoria agreed to that being the popular con- 
ception. Down among her hoard of unexpressed 
thoughts was a feeling that she herself, from New 
York state, and not from New England, had de- 
sired considerably more than she had already, and 
had been very lax about insuring it to herself. If 
this Georgia Low was ousting her, she deserved 
it ; but it would be particularly hard to have things 
happen just that way. The little estate of Frau- 
lein Ackern would not overwhelm anybody, but 
it would be enough to clear her absolutely of debt, 
and leave a surplus, besides. The surplus would 
give her some freedom with her own destiny, in- 
stead of the cramped limitation which so stifled 
her now. She might not, for instance, care to 
marry the Ober-Leutnant von Zonsk and retire 
to become an insignificant but socially recogniz- 
able quantity as an army officer’s wife; but she 
was sure it would make her sing and act better 
to have the option of doing so or not, just as she 
pleased. On the other hand, she was beginning 
to believe the plain bread-and-butter side of it 
269 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


must be part of the difficulty. People couldn’t 
do what they had to do, half so well, as the things 
they might do, or leave undone, as they chose. 
Her own history bore this out ; and she now felt 
confident she should never have been engaged to 
sing anywhere, had she not been so safely shel- 
tered in Fraulein Ackern’s villa that it didn’t 
matter. 

“ I really ought to be going,” ventured Cecilia. 

But as Victoria told her not to hurry, she re- 
spected the request. 

“ How strange and unnatural,” she resumed, 
“ was her attraction for that Archie Aldrich. I 
really wish it might have been returned, for she 
exactly suited him.” 

“ It’s odd,” cogitated Victoria, “ but you know, 
when a woman just suits a man, he rarely falls 
in love with her.” 

“ My — my ! ” cried Cecilia, in admiration. 
“You people do see things! I suppose it’s 
the life you lead. It must be a very wonderful 
life ” 

“ That depends ” 

“ And this Archie Aldrich is exactly a case in 
point. You’re just right. Dear me, how right 
you are! Georgia Low was just his notion of 
how a woman ought to be. She knew a great 
deal, and was very refined, and clever, and broad- 
270 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


minded, and all that. What she did know was 
what most American women don't — and he didn’t 
care for what most American women do know, 
at all — or he thought he didn’t. And here are 
you : and because you’ve always been just as 
American as you could be, and only known what 
they all know, everything has come to you, and 
Archie Aldrich was the first to follow and get 
infatuated. Oh, don’t protest ! Everyone in the 
Pension saw it. He was infatuated almost be- 
fore he ever saw you.” 

“ Maybe that was it ! ” said Victoria. “ I’ve 
often thought most cases of infatuation take place 
in advance through some idea men get of us be- 
forehand, and then have to live up to, out of loy- 
alty to themselves.” 

Cecilia was thoughtful. “ But that didn’t 
work in Archie Aldrich’s case with poor Geor- 
gia ” 

“ He didn’t get it beforehand — she had always 
been there, more or less.” 

There was another of the long pauses to remind 
Cecilia for the fourth time that she must be go- 
ing. Victoria forbore to repeat the conventional 
protestation. But she gave her departing caller 
the names and addresses of three or four good 
“ American ” Pensions, and hoped she would like 
Vienna as a change from Dresden. 

271 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ What a shame there are no rooms here,” 
sighed Miss Whiteside. “ It seems to be per- 
fectly lovely here. The place would just suit 
me.” 

“ It is a pity,” deplored Victoria. “ But you’ll 
find some of those other places all right, I feel 
sure.” 

“ Now that you’ve spoiled me, you must let me 
come and see you sometimes.” 

“ Do,” said Victoria. 

She found the latest quandary more thinkable 
when Miss Whiteside’s attenuated leave-taking 
finally had a vanishing point in the silk swish 
securely outside the outer hall doorway. Having 
accompanied her visitor thither, she started to- 
ward her room, to be met by tiptoeing Frau 
Heincke. 

“ Is she gone? ” whispered the Hausfrau. 

“ Oh, yes.” 

Victoria’s reply had a reassurance for her 
caution. 

“ She is not your friend — nein? I know her 
kind. If I find a room for her it would must be 
cheap ! ” 

Practically without pausing on her course, Vic- 
toria dismissed the subject. “ You don’t want 
her,” she said. “ She’s not all bad — but for all 
that, she’s a good deal of a cat. Before she got 
272 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


through getting on our nerves we’d be getting on 
hers.” 

There was no opportunity for prolonging the 
discussion, though the personality and possibility 
of applicants for rooms was a pet theme with the 
Hausfrau of the Pension Heincke. Gently Vic- 
toria closed her room door in a manner which 
seemed to consider that the one thing her Haus- 
frau would wish her to do. Yet it shut off the 
threatened analysis. 

In the middle of her increased solitude Vic- 
toria stood and drew down her brows at each of 
her four walls in turn, while she restlessly tapped 
her foot. In that part of Miss Whiteside’s nar- 
rative pertaining to Fraulein Ackern’s defection, 
she felt convinced of something beyond the mere 
germ of truth. Had it not come as a culmina- 
tion of her own vague fears in the same direc- 
tion, she would have given it as little heed as she 
had to Miss Whiteside’s own romance with Adolf 
— a plain case of a man bored. But, while mod- 
est enough, as a rule, concerning any latent spir- 
itual prowess in herself, Victoria was too much 
the woman to deny herself a moiety of divination, 
even of prophecy. Traditionally like every other 
member of her sex, she was sure she always fore- 
saw things. She had dealt precariously with the 
allegiance of the most devoted and influential 
273 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


friend she’d ever attracted to herself. Knowing 
she had done so, she had felt, for some time, a 
forewarning of retribution. 

Being very human, she naturally failed to es- 
cape a touch of bitterness toward the usurper 
who seemed to be bringing it upon her. “ I 
feel almost depraved to even think of it,” she 
thought, “ but this is a mean old world, and for 
all I know she may be a cat, too. Once I might 
have cut her out of her Archie, and — you never 
can tell. It’s a world of quits.” 

She was glad the idea had not possessed her 
for such time as the Whiteside woman had laid 
her friend out. Rather the opposite, thank 
Heaven 1 Still, you never could count on a dis- 
appointed old maid. Their condition was too 
unnatural. 

Thus Victoria confessed her shame at her un- 
conquerable growing spite, in the hope of lessen- 
ing it. Without success, however. Her irrita- 
tion grew apace, until the bell announcing the 
midday meal (variously known as dinner, or de- 
jeuner, or luncheon) discovered her, to herself, 
as unfit for meeting her fellow Pensioners at 
table. 

She decided on the open air, pinning on her hat 
with the much-chronicled vicious jabs of the 
woman out of sorts. The Pension Heincke lay 
274 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


just to one side of St. Stephen’s Church. Three 
times she walked widely around that Cathedral, 
her course comprising the Gassen on two sides 
and the open square in front. Then feeling an 
increase of energy, if not of relief, she took the 
direct way of the Ringstrasse which swept out 
before the Cathedral towers to its curve at the 
Volksgarten. 

Her walk now had an added zest. She knew 
that at this particular hour on this especial prom- 
enade the chances for meeting the Ober-Leutnant 
were favorable. More than once she had counted 
on it and had not been disappointed. His habit 
was to walk alone, and if she, too, were alone, he 
never neglected to come forward with his courtly 
“If the gracious Fraulein allows it,” and to join 
her until she dismissed him, accepting such dis- 
missal with good-nature. 

To-day she could make out his shoulders in the 
distance before she had followed the Ring as far 
as the Burgtheater. The sight of him was to a 
degree softening, in that it induced a pensiveness 
which partook of the nature of renunciation. " I 
never much meant to take poor Fritzchen se- 
riously,” she thought. (She had nicknamed him 
for her private pleasure without his knowledge.) 
" But now I never can — even if I ever should ! ” 

She smiled at the tangible paradox that this 

2 7S 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


morning, even as he came toward her, he receded. 
Hereafter she must know Fritzchen a little less. 
While she had in reservation a prospect of Fritz- 
chen’s official value in coin of the realm, it had 
been all right. But now it was different. And 
as she parodied herself thus, it all struck her as 
so funny that when Fritzchen was near enough 
to make his profound obeisance she was on a 
verge of laughter, not at infinite distance from 
the hysterical. 

“If the gracious Fraulein allows !” He 
turned and walked beside her. “ The Fraulein 
is very happy this morning. A rehearsal ? ” 

“ I only wish there were,” she replied. “ I’d 
surprise them.” 

“ Ach —so." 

His brown eyes had a slit-like penetration for 
her meaning. 

“ Ja,” said Victoria. “ I feel extremely tem- 
peramental.” 

“ Where do you go ? ” he inquired. 

“ Into the Volksgarten, over by the Grillpar- 
zer statue, and home again, and um Gottes Wil- 
len, talk to me, talk to me, all the way ! Nothing 
is as it should be, and I like your way of seeing 
and saying how it isn’t.” 

The Ober-Leutnant had nothing to say for that. 

“ Of course, I strike you dumb,” said Victoria. 
276 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ Well — I suppose it's your way of not seeing or 
saying, that I liked, and Fd merely forgotten. 
All right ! I’ll talk to you. Did you ever see 
* Zaza' ? The best line in the old thing is 1 all men 
are beasts ! ’ Is there any play with a good, old- 
fashioned, self-evident corresponding line like ‘ all 
woman are felines ! ’ ; or something of that 
kind? ” 

The Ober-Leutnant shrugged out a world of 
ignorance on the subject. “ In Latin — per- 
haps ! ” he ventured. 

“ No doubt,” said Victoria. “ You have to go 
back a great ways to find what’s always striking 
you. Well, here is our Grillparzer statue, and 
I’m not going to take you any farther.” 

“ It is well,” said the Ober-Leutnant. “ I have 
little time to-day.” 

“ And little curiosity — do you know that’s the 
simply great thing about you!” said Victoria, 
with enthusiasm. 

She returned from her walk, refreshed, and 
half resolved on action. As soon as the opera 
season was over at the end of the present week, 
she could, if she willed, hasten to the Ost-see, with 
or without Fraulein Ackern’s urgence. She 
could make a fair stand with this Georgia Low 
and fight it out as to who should be the most de- 
voted; and whose devotion should be most ac- 
277 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


ceptable to an invalid. But, after all, was she not 
feeling unwarranted anxiety? Fraulein Ackern 
might live to spend many summers at the Ost-see, 
after this one. Next winter she would surely 
find the prettiest, coziest Etage in all Vienna, 
preferably on the Ringstrasse overlooking a 
park, and compel Fraulein Ackern to come and 
live with her. She could get even with Georgia 
by inviting her, too — without expectation of ac- 
ceptance, however. . . . 

Events were moving toward that which should 
make all her planning as idle as it is the general 
fate of such things to be; as useless as it was un- 
worthy. With due appreciation, and with a 
deeper bitterness of pure shame for the other bit- 
terness into which she had fallen, Victoria faced 
its unworthiness, when a telegram was brought 
to her door, early the following morning, before 
the serving of her coffee. 

“ Of course, it is from Fraulein Ackern,” she 
said, from her pillow, calmly, but with drawn 
face. “ Give it to me.” 

“Ach Gott,” whimpered Frau Heincke, with- 
holding the envelope. “ I fear to see you open 
it.” 

“ Give it to me,” demanded Victoria, sitting 
upright. 

She tore it open with dogged roughness. “ Of 
278 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


course/’ she said, as she dropped it on the sheet 
covering the divan where she slept. 

The telegram read : 

Fraulein Ackern no better. Come if your duties per- 
mit. I think she wants to see you. Letter follows. 

Constance Martha Low. 

“ I shall not wait for the letter,” said Victoria. 
“ Find out about the trains at once. I shall not 
ask their permission at the opera. I was to sing 
to-night. No matter. After I’m gone they’ll 
have to grant me Urlaub. I’m going to Fraulein 
Ackern at once. See to everything, please.” 

“ Ach Gott, ach Gott!” wailed Frau Heincke, 
as she hastened on the ordered errands. “ Frau- 
lein might lose her engagement. Ach Gott, ach 
Gott!” 


XXII 


FROM THE RAIN, AND THE SILENCE, AND THE 
SOUND OF THE SEA 

Two miles inland from the Baltic, across the 
heathered moraines and around an easy declivity 
corniced with thin woods, a half-dozen villas 
grouped themselves about a ribbon of green park- 
ing, a pavilion, and a white-and-gold Conditorei, 
laden at its windows with flowers, animals, vege- 
tables, and architecture in almond paste. The 
villas, comparatively new, and of an opulent ag- 
gressiveness, were yet but an annex to the ancient 
village of Pretzenpringel, to be reached by a ten- 
minutes path through the trees. At Pretzen- 
pringel was the usual Gasthaus, or inn, built like 
a mere enlargement of the peasant's thatched 
stone huts, all about it. At a corner of the main 
floor of the inn another Conditorei terminated 
the limit of the local trade, which, for any ap- 
pearance to the contrary, ran exclusively to 
bakery, and was here given over to the steady 
users of black breads and various types of 
Brotchen. 


280 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


At its remote origin, Pretzenpringel had oc- 
curred, less with an eye to the prospect of the 
estuary to be had across the pink and gray mo- 
raines from the upper windows of some of the 
villas, than with a careful forethought for changes 
of wind and weather. As it was archaic, so was 
it also bosky and sheltered. On the other hand, 
the villas of the newer section stood for the most 
part in their bedizened gardens, high-walled from 
the gravel roads, but unshielded from the level 
sun. 

In Fraulein Ackern’s make-up there had al- 
ways been a touch of the English, which pre- 
ferred shade and seclusion to whatever wider 
sweep might be granted the eye at sacrifice of 
these things. In the older Pretzenpringel was a 
renovated peasant’s dwelling. A thrifty Beam- 
ter’s widow had added a second story, and eked 
out her pensioned retirement renting the rooms 
she had made habitable. Two gnarled elms 
threw a shifting, endless dusk across threshold 
and window ledge. Always against the stone 
and brick walls rang the ocean sounds from the 
Ost-see, which might be heard the more vividly 
for not being seen. It may have been that these 
things, or something in the somber unobtrusive- 
ness of cool stone and shade, had singled this 
house out as the chosen summer home of Frau- 
281 


id 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


lein Ackern. At all events, since the renovations 
many years before, its owner had leased the 
rooms to no other occupant. No one had ever 
habited the newer rooms, save Fraulein Ackern 
and the maid she always brought with her, and 
the chance friend who sometimes came as her 
guest. 

The Beamter’s widow occupied one room open- 
ing into the kitchen on the original ground floor. 
Across the wide entrance area was a large cham- 
ber furnished as a sitting-room and leased with 
the rooms above as complement to the suite. 
Under the direction of Fraulein Ackem’s maid, 
the proprietress looked after the daily menu, 
serving it sometimes under the elms, sometimes 
in the sitting-room, and sometimes upstairs in 
one of the sleeping apartments. On those sum- 
mers when Fraulein Ackern had come alone, the 
latter had been the more usual procedure. She 
was one of those who take their solitude in real 
seclusion. 

In time it must come about that even as Frau- 
lein Ackern’s maid knew the exact tastes, and 
habits, and peculiarities of her mistress, so the 
good woman who let the summer lodging to 
her, year by year, should come to know them, 
too, and to consider the arrangement one which 
could never conceivably have end. For her, 
282 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Fraulein Ackern’s return was the one annual 
event. 

The widow’s own name, of which she was 
more than proud, because he who had conferred 
it upon her had been in the Government postal 
service, was Horner. The fact of his rank might 
never be lost sight of, as she always indicated 
it to the full whenever she wrote it down : “ Frau 
Beamter’s Witwe Horner — Mrs. Officer’s Widow 
Horner.” 

It was singular, Victoria thought, that in the 
cold gray of the morning when she drove 
across the moorlands from the five-mile distant 
nearest station to Pretzenpringel, little facts like 
this should most insistently come before her. 
They made up her memories of the Ost-see sum- 
mer of the past year. They were a spell of im- 
pregnable removal, too; dividing off all the past, 
and singling out its details as if to make plau- 
sible its remoteness. 

Across the moraines the sea gave now and then 
a long, swashing noise, like a fold of sound 
through the fogs. The air was so damp that she 
had been compelled to have the coachman close 
the top of his droschky. Along the gravel road 
its wheels had a muffled creaking which tended 
to increase the stupor of drowsiness that envel- 
oped her. She had been traveling all night. 

283 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Blurred through the panes of the carriage, she 
made out the flight of sea-gulls. A peasant 
workman passed close by as the droschky slowed 
on an unaccountable whim of the driver. Like 
all peasants he was silent, with an embodied in- 
ertia that made of him, at this dim hour, a figure 
like unto death, or a wavering shadow. Across 
the white rectangle of the droschky window, he 
moved in a blurred motionlessness that knew 
neither speech nor sight. Visible, and intangi- 
ble, and inanimate, he took on a semblance to 
tableau from her childhood which, at certain 
times like this, after too little sleep, would come 
in still procession before her eyes. 

At such times, things actually seen had all the 
impassivity of things remembered, ranging them- 
selves in a line with them. There were the sea- 
gulls, white against colder white; herself and 
brothers, speechless, still, against the snow-drift 
at the schoolhouse doorway; this North German 
peasant with his massed bulk limned out in the 
paleness of dawn; the long stretches of heather 
with the straight interruption of artificial woods; 
herself again, still younger at five, peering tip- 
toe and awe-struck over the side of her father's 
coffin. 

The real blended only with what was far 
enough for immutable stationary visioning. As 
284 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


the visual eye brought nothing but the unattended 
sense of detachment in things seen, so the mental 
eye rejected all that thought or feeling might 
touch, evoking only from that dawn of life which 
is a sort of sleep which sees, ere the awakening 
which blinds. She leaned back, and closed her 
eyes. 

The droschky halted with a jolt. Victoria 
had a feeling of having slept hours made into a 
moment, or a moment made into hours: the two 
sensations were interchangeable. She was slow 
imaging this as her destination, even with the 
proof confronting her in Frau Horner tugging 
at the carriage door. Impatience on Frau Hor- 
ner’s part was, in this instance, as unsuccessful 
as is impatience usually, until the driver alighted 
and jerked it open for her. 

Still feeling but half-awake, Victoria received 
and returned the subdued greeting of Frau Hor- 
ner, and added Trinkgeld to the fee she had paid 
the coachman at the station, and let herself be 
conducted with a certain awesome ceremony to- 
ward the house. The two elms reeked of 
palpable moisture as she passed under them, 
and the strip of stone- walk was greenish with 
dampness. 

“ She heard the carriage coming,” Frau Hor- 
ner explained. “ You’re to go right up. Frau- 
285 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


lein Low is away. She has gone an hour already 
to Heisenbrot for another nurse. The first one 
must go, all at once, to her bridegroom in 
Konigsberg, who has fallen at his work and hurt 
himself.” 

“About how far is Heisenbrot?” asked Vic- 
toria, as she removed her long cloak in the sit- 
ting-room, and touched her hair, with the thought 
of how Fraulein Ackern had always had a pride 
in her tendency to be dressy. 

“ I mean,” she whispered, “ when do you ex- 
pect Fraulein Low back? ” 

“ We do not entirely know. She will make the 
right selection, or the maid might have gone. 
Before Mittagessen, perhaps.” 

They ascended the stairs. 

Fraulein Ackern lay high up among the pil- 
lows, and put out her hand, beckoning Victoria, 
who ran toward it, and seized it, in her old way, 
and laid it against her cheek. 

“ Schwesterchen,” she said, “ I ought to have 
come long ago — long ago — before anybody had 
to send for me.” 

“ I did not permit that they should send,” said 
Fraulein Ackern, with little alteration of voice, 
though the effort of speech was perceptible, and 
the distinguished clear-cut German trailed a lit- 
tle. “ I had great fear you could find irritations 
286 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


with your Herr Direktor, who might not wish 
that you should leave your work. I have still a 
great fear you should not have left it.” 

“ Always first with you — that work of mine,” 
said Victoria. “ Ach, Schwesterchen — you re- 
member I wasn’t so eager to begin it — and now 
I’m often sorry I ever did. I’m not sure I had 
the right to.” 

“ Do not talk so,” said Fraulein Ackern, se- 
verely. “ Your success has been already great. 
It will be always and always greater. You should 
not speak as you speak.” 

“ Something must happen before I can feel as 
you do about it,” said Victoria. “ I seem to be 
all the time awaiting some revelation. Ach, 
Schwesterchen — let us not talk of that. Let us 
talk of when you’re well and strong again. What 
is my work, my silly little make-believe career, 
compared to that ! ” 

“ When I am well and strong ” — Fraulein 
Ackern thought deeply for an instant. “ That is 
of no moment,” she said, finally. “ I am only 
an old woman — an old maid — unmarried, there- 
fore childless and inconsequent. You must 
marry. That will be the revelation. You must 
sing, and sing until you find the man you can love 
and respect, and then you must marry him — but 
do not cease to sing! When you have borne 
287 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


children to the man you love and respect, then 
will all you look for come to you.” 

In her humiliation and remorse it seemed in- 
congruous and brutal to Victoria that she must 
realize at this moment how far was such a theory 
from the technical one of the Director of the 
Vienna opera. One of the clauses of her con- 
tract forbade marriage of any sort, without the 
especial deliberation and consent of the Director 
and his associates; and for no other reason than 
the supposed terrible danger entailed by mother- 
hood to a voice. The fact faced her with de- 
pressing negation, against these sentiments of a 
German woman, candid and innocent, who lay 
dying as she gave them utterance. 

She felt as if her face must bear the burden 
of its irresponsiveness, its sophistications. 

But Fraulein Ackern was not watching her. 
Directly forward she looked; and she summoned 
her strength for the yet unuttered messages and 
explanations : 

“ But all that will be — I have no fear for that. 
My only fear has been that you may think me 
hard, may cherish my memory less, because I 
have done so little toward it, and what little I 
have done must be all.” 

“ Oh ! ” she protested, and could get no farther, 

“ For it is the hard duty that those of us who 
288 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


may only do so little, should yet distribute what 
we do. To me the great joy of all joys would be 
to follow my heart, and give to you, who have 
most brought pleasure to my life, all the little 
that I have. But you are provided for. Your 
destiny is assured, and I have no right to leave 
undone what I may do for others who have no 
promise of happiness. ,, 

Victoria felt an onrush of thankfulness that 
all covetousness had left her soul — forever, 
surely ! What she was hearing was as she would 
have it. Tenderly she kissed the speaker’s cheek. 

“ I had much bewilderment, at first, how I 
should do good with the little I should leave be- 
hind. Many times I begged Fraulein Georgia 
that I should leave it to her name, because she 
would have the time, and the youth, and the great 
heart to do the good with it I could not. But 
she will not let me. She forbids. And so I try 
to remember all who will one day need, and I 
have given to them that they may need a little 
less. I remember first a grand-niece in Baiern, 
who is a governess, and has no good looks, and 
only intermediate brains. But maybe with a few 
thousand marks she will get a husband, or she 
will at least not work so hard. I remember, too, 
a grand-nephew also orphaned, who would be an 
engineer, but cannot. I have not believed he 
289 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


will be a great engineer, but I have so made that 
he may try. I have left a few hundred marks to 
little Katy Schramm, because she would go away 
to a young ladies’ Pensionat and become a gov- 
erness, and Frau Schramm, her mamma, cannot 
afford to send her. And I have remembered all 
the servants who have worked for me, many 
years ago, or now, and who have no husbands 
because they can never marry, or because their 
husbands are dead. Altogether, have these 
things taken what I have. You know we, in 
Deutschland, are not rich like your rich in 
Amerika.” 

The account had been a long one. The speaker 
had an ensuing exhaustion when she must rest. 
Victoria stroked the coverlet and chafed the poor 
thin hands, and prayed her to tell no more. All 
was well, all was right. “ Who am I,” she 
thought, “ that this spotless woman should make 
confession unto me ? ” 

“ Do — do be at peace,” she begged, softly. 
“ All is right, dear, and I understand. You have 
done all as I would have had you do it.” 

“ But — but,” Fraulein Ackern made husky ef- 
fort again. “ It was all so much trouble. I have 
lived very selfishly. And I thought, at first, it 
would be easy to leave it all with Fraulein Geor- 
gia, and only tell her to do good with it, when 
290 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


she can, where she can, as she does good already . 
with her own.” 

“ She should have let you,” Victoria mur- 
mured, with averted face. 

“ No — no — I now see she was right ! There 
was that one duty before me. I must not be so 
selfish to avoid it. I had strength left for that. 
She was right.” 

Victoria buried her face in her hands. “ Oh,” 
she cried, her words coming muffled between her 

fingers, “ you all make me so ashamed ” 

“ Child ” 

“ For the little instant, while I get the light, I 
see myself as I am, self-centered, crude, unworthy 
— vulgar. And the worst of it is — the light is 
only for the little instant. I shall go back to 
my old self again. I can’t help it, because it is 
ingrained deeper than the other thing which some- 
times — once in a long, long while — helps me to 
see it just as it is.” 

“ Dearie — dearie ” 

Victoria heard the English syllables, the little 
twirls in the r’s, and felt she must break her heart 
with weeping, but when she uncovered her face 
her eyes were dry. 

Their sight settled, staring at the foot of the 
bed. For all that might happen, she must face 
her inevitable self. For all she might wish to 
291 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


be, there was no escape from what she was — 
nothing save some rare occasional revelation like 
this of the duality which permitted her to re- 
member what she was only to know she must 
again forget. Aspiration might soar Heaven- 
ward; but resolution could have no showing be- 
fore plain honesty, which recognized the forces 
of its breaking to be stronger in the aggregate, 
than those of its making. It was an old, old 
parable — this one of fishes, swimming about in 
globes. But who could escape it? On every 
side the light might cast its rainbow prisms; but 
the hand that molded the glass barrier had been 
stronger than the wavering of golden fins in an 
imprisoned gleam. 

There was little she could do now, though she 
was glad she could sit there holding the dying 
woman’s hand. 

As the morning advanced rain came out of the 
sea to tick against the windows, in gusts of fine 
spray. Fraulein Ackern dozed for long intervals, 
but at times she would arouse for a while to 
speak, more languidly, of Victoria’s months at 
the Villa, the most perfect of her memory; or of 
Victoria’s work; or what concerned Victoria’s 
happiness. 

The day moved, however, with the terrible 
swiftness of still hours. The twilight settled 
292 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


down early with its clouds, but would yet claim 
as long a durance as the day. Not until it had 
thickened to a stationary dullness of light did 
Georgia return from her quest. She had found 
the right nurse after a longer search than an- 
ticipated. Victoria was released from her vigil 
as Fraulein Ackern slept. 

“ Who but you would have done what you have 
done ? ” 

The two women stood together. The sitting- 
room downstairs held out to them the cold dusk, 
broken by the lamplight. It was Victoria who 
had spoken from the silence. 

“ Those of us who want something else than 
what we have — something else than what we can 
have — are always thinking how, maybe, some- 
thing might have changed us. To-day, for so 
much of the time, Fve been wishing I could have 
known you — years and years ago — as he did.” 

The other strove to find words for her pro- 
testations, but failed. Something in Victoria’s 
earnestness intensified the exaction of speech 
which foresaw no reply. 

“ All day, with the rain against the window, 
I’ve been deluding myself that to have known 
you, then, might have made me different. It 
would not have, of course. I should have failed 
293 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


to realize you then, just as Fve failed to realize 
you now, until the unnecessary tangible proof 
comes to me, to seem to help me for a moment. 
Well, it may be only until I forget — but I want 
to tell you that I do see it now. How I see it — 
oh, good woman — oh, true woman — oh, tender 
and heroic woman ! ” 

“ There is,” faltered the other, “ always some- 
where an explanation. You would overwhelm 
me but that I know what you mean. I am none 
of those things, but — -since you speak them to me, 
HI make one confession. I have written it here 
— on the fly-leaf of his first book. I found it 
among the things he had written, knowing not 
what he wrote. My confession is — I have 
known! Read it. Keep the book, dear. He 
had not yet found you when he inscribed it, but 

as surely as the morrow comes ” 

“ Don't tell me that — don't,” cried Victoria. 
“ I have thought so, too. And I know I cannot 
meet him half-way — as you would have done. 
Try as I may, it will end in a wound for him! ” 
Georgia shook her head. 

“ We cannot know,” she said. “ That must 
work itself out as it must be. It will be you who 
must discover and decide. My hope — my hope 

— goes with you — dear ” 

Victoria had opened the pages. 

294 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ Life may not die . . .” 
she read; 

“ Love may not die : 

For I have seen how e’en a falling leaf 
Beareth its beauty toward the earth, — 

And tarries, yearningly, and sweetly, in the 
Autumn wind.” 

“ I shall try to meet him as you might have.” 

Victoria lifted haggard eyes to the other : like 
an Oriental, lifting some wan supplication to the 
East — across a universe. “ I shall try — but I 
shall fail! I shall fail!” 

A week after Fraulein Ackern’s death, Vic- 
toria learned that by the terms of the will all the 
household effects of the Blasewitz villa, including 
many articles of beauty and value, had been left 
to her. She was in the Harz at the time, coach- 
ing for her winter work with the Baronin Lubke. 
She decided at once to arrange for the disposal 
of the bulk of the things at auction. She could 
keep whatever was most worth keeping. But, as 
she calculated it, she could realize just about 
enough from the sale to enable her to send a 
check for four thousand marks to her unac- 
quainted benefactor, Jack Gorman; and in doing 
that she felt she would be doing Fraulein Ackern’s 
memory no injustice. 


295 


XXIII 


THE HESITATION OF A KNIGHT-ERRANT, WITH 
THE POETRY OF TURQUOISE SILK, AND TEMPER- 
AMENT DEFINED 

All the air of one especial day in the Septem- 
ber following seemed to Aldrich nimble, and 
perky. Even at late afternoon he was still ex- 
hilarated with a pride in his significant moral tri- 
umph of his morning. His satisfaction held yet 
compact after the lapse of hours — a conviction of 
original grace in the winning of himself. Pass- 
ing beneath the windows of the American Pension 
Heincke — Victoria's Pension — with the sunlight 
on the St. Stephen's towers opposite, and the 
morning invigorating every sense toward its im- 
mediate impulse, he knew how easily he might 
have been less resistant. He might have met, less 
alertly, the coil of haste he had escaped with such 
level-headedness. There were laws, elusive, deli- 
cate, whereby it was plain, if indistinctly so, that 
it were best, on the whole, not to seek Victoria at 
296 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


all, perhaps, until occasion should first seek her 
for him, in some encounter on the Ringstrasse. 
Such accidental meeting could be managed into 
probability. And if he had really come to Vienna 
more for Victoria than for this Marie Therese 
Costume Comedy Drama, then he could but 
assert his authority over himself by forcing 
Victoria to a secondary place in his immediate 
purpose. 

He, therefore, got himself to work at an hour 
when he often idled, and endeavored to pack the 
thought of Victoria into seclusion until future 
airing. He tried to poise himself into ease and 
circumspection with the situation and its demands. 
It was all useless. His restlessness began sweep- 
ing a shimmer across printed lines of old vellum 
records — records which he had drawn from their 
archives at noon. The ancient script grated his 
nerves. The printed archaisms beat his eardrums 
to deafness. 

His Hausfrau brought him his supper on a 
tray. She brought him cheese, ham, black Kiim- 
melbread, and a large glass of Miinchner — most 
satisfactory of all, in its power to induce the ple- 
thoric spirit : Aldrich’s strength of character be- 
gan to claim from him some indulgence in rec- 
ognition of its worthiness. The proven triumph 
of the will not infrequently congratulates itself 
297 


20 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


at the crowing stage, and retires, voluntarily, to 
happy defeat. There was no reason, Aldrich said 
to himself, why he should not call on Miss Fur- 
man — no reason why he should not call to-day. 
Superfluities of will-power were steadily trickling, 
like thawing stalactites, into a single runnel of 
warm fancy. At his toilette he lapsed from the 
subjective side of the matter into an impersonal 
survey of Victoria’s story, his thought thus 
browsing over an incalculated expenditure of 
time between his waistcoat and his necktie. 

There could, of course, be but one end. He 
surrendered as soon as a fit hour of early night 
made surrender possible. The writer sent in his 
card on this first evening after his arrival in 
Vienna, to the singer at the American Pension 
Heincke. 

A few moments later he trembled a little, much 
to his own disgust, at the lush heavy sound of 
her gown as she passed along the hallway. There 
was, furthermore, the commingle of her voice 
in some greeting with another boarder. Then 
she entered in a broidered turquoise blouse, above 
breadths of shadowy skirt. Being one whom 
certain incentives made a poet, he thought of 
a blue-bell swaying to light from thick dark 
grasses. 

Personable and feminine for all her strength 
298 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


of feature, there was the old swing, unaltered, in 
her stride toward him. Yet there was a change, 
he thought, and he felt that self-cumbersomeness 
which means a necessary quick alteration of 
standard. His preconceptions seemed to find 
themselves in the way, and to be sluggish in get- 
ting themselves off. Something, too, in the Wal- 
kyrie erectness of her head made him and his step 
forward insignificant. 

Any halt to formalities was, for her, out of 
order, and she greeted him, right heartily, as if 
resuming the acquaintance where it had been in- 
terrupted fourteen months before — at the villa 
gate. 

“Why didn’t you send us a telegram?” she 
said. “We might have taken you in here. The 
Pension is ‘ full ’ officially — but Frau Heincke’s 
a genius in the discovery of new corners.” 

“ I should have wanted a very dark one in that 
case,” he said. “ Even as it is, I’ve lost little 
enough time. I arrived — late last night ! ” 

“ That’s the way. But why haven’t you writ- 
ten more? ” 

“ When letters came from you I had no per- 
mission to answer them more than once,” he said. 
“ You wrote two — in all.” 

“ Well,” she shifted, “ anyhow, it’s good of 
you to look me up, particularly if I don’t deserve 
299 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


it. Ah, me! you know, I never could claim to 
deserve much of anything.” 

“You never could claim to have to!” They 
laughed. 

“ I’ve been wanting to see you, and scold you,” 
she said, “ oh, ever so hard. What’s all this the 
papers have said about your play being ‘ sug- 
gestive ’ ? That isn’t like you.” 

“ Why should it be like me? ” he replied. 

“ There is something in that,” she reflected. 

“ You see,” he reasoned, with light experimen- 
tation, “ if a man doesn’t get tugged beyond his 
own conventions, sometime or other, he stands a 
chance of rusting at anchor.” 

“ Why — why ” — her cordiality had the some- 
thing well-nigh maternal he was always perplexed 
at arousing in all women. “ That sounds as if 
our Archie were growing.” 

“ Well — whatever it may be, ‘ our Archie ’ has 
often felt he needed to. Why, after all, shouldn’t 
his chaste faculty have had this unpremeditated 
joy of one high kick ! ” 

“ But he dreamed of soaring — once — didn’t 
he?” 

“ I’m glad you’re willing to think it might have 
been.” 

“ My — my ! ” she mused. “ He’s never done 
anything else. That’s what alarms one.” 

300 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


He searched her expression. “ You don’t look 
different or older,” he said, “ but you are — many 
years.” 

“ It might be mean to account for it by saying 
that all summer long I’ve been trying to soar with 
you. In short, I’ve been reading things you’ve 
written.” 

“ There is no flaw in your proof,” he replied. 
“ You never would have done that in Blasewitz.” 

“ I meant to, even there — indeed I did. But 
you were presented and I never thought of it 
again. Having the man himself around just 
killed his poems.” 

“ Of course,” said Aldrich. “ No man can 
ever be around himself without ruining himself.” 

“ Unless he’s the best part of himself — that’s 
what you mean, isn’t it?” As of old she chose 
to look thoughtfully at words he had not quite 
meant. “ For you know there are some men who 
contrive to be that — probably because they’re not 
anything more.” 

“ You made possible a double distinction — so 
I don’t just follow, begging your pardon,” he 
laughed. 

“ You don’t follow? Of course you do. Turn 
it around. Haven’t you known women whose 
visible presence was so much that it overshad- 
owed whatever they did? And weren’t they 
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usually women who did very little of any- 
thing?” 

“ And there are such men.” 

“ There is one at least — right here in a garrison 
stationed in Vienna. And I see him often — and 
even like to.” 

Because it made Aldrich to a vague degree un- 
happy to hear this, and because he surmised al- 
ready, he forbore to ask the identity of the man 
in question. At the same time he was sure Vic- 
toria, with her zest for making a clean breast of 
everything, had intended he should ask it. 

“ Perhaps it’s a good thing to see him often,” 
was the only reply he could think of, “ if his value 
depends on his visibility.” 

“ Most of them can’t boast even that,” she in- 
terrupted. “ Yes — on the whole I believe it has 
been a good thing, under the circumstances.” 

He was kneaded by strokes of her personality. 
Experiencing, at moments like this, some sense 
of the flabbiness of dough under her hands, he 
as quickly knew some of the lightness, too, which 
more than compensated. 

If in the succeeding conversation she featured 
one Ober-Leutnant beyond necessity (as though 
to inform Aldrich, without stint, of his verita- 
bility) she yet spoke of him with an indulgence 
which did not guarantee the adoption of a high 
302 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


standard in measuring him. Aldrich thought it 
but just to recognize here the nascent artist, co- 
ordinate with the stoic. For her, no formal 
scale might be established at this period of her 
growth. More than any other must the stage- 
life open the eyes to elasticities, expansions, con- 
tractibilities. From even a circumspect stand- 
point, a woman like Victoria could but gain the 
rebound of personal instances : which was merely 
to say that she had opportunity for knowing that 
where human nature is concerned, the muddiest 
water-fall has yet a white and lively spray. 

That universal attitude of this strangely con- 
tradictory profession was something Aldrich had 
brought with him from his recent closer approach 
to it in New York. He could not veto it for Vic- 
toria. But it consoled him, beyond calculation, 
to note how little, in some respects, her profession 
seemed making her over. And where it had 
made her over it had been for the better — to a 
degree he would not have dared prophesy on the 
Dresden Terasse, one Fourth of July. 

The days and weeks following brought un- 
numbered opportunity for seeing her. At her 
own suggestion, he made an arrangement where- 
by he had his midday dinner at the American Pen- 
sion Heincke. For a considerable interval he 
made a feint of retaining some stand at neutrality, 
303 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


more as a question of self-discipline than from 
any faith in his power to subvert the issues. With 
what he deemed good effect, he enacted the keen, 
interested observer : and though his oncoming was 
now fated, his preliminary was the full latitude 
of trying to see her as she might be were he not 
there. But her presence saturated his fallowness. 
She was there, none the less : femininely rugged, 
overtowering his mental sensitiveness beyond the 
ken of either. She seemed to widen on his im- 
agination in sinuous spirals, from day to day. 

One of the things he most noted was the way 
her directness utilized, and openly, every little 
crudity, straight to adornment. Some of them 
became her well enough to soften, rather than 
intensify, the conditions surrounding them, and 
Aldrich could blend them into harmony with his 
own pride in whatever she did. The days of his 
fallowness were now numbered. During many 
noon waitings at the side door of the Opernthe- 
ater, when he found himself among gentlemen of 
the ballet or scene-shift, he did not mind being 
stared at and smiled upon. The looking and the 
smiling conveyed : “ We’re in the joke — know 
all about it — you belong to the Furman.” It well- 
nigh pleased him to see them thus sniffing inti- 
macy in the relation. They might indeed mis- 
interpret according to familiar precedents. The 

304 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


especial contacts of such lives would probably 
guide them to their moral estimates. But there 
was a gusto of paraphrase in remembering that 
unto those knowing naught but evil nothing is 
evil. Here, this appeared to hit the average bet- 
ter than the familiar theory as to “ the pure ” to 
whom all things must look so alike. 

Once only did he catch himself squirming 
slightly at sliding scales in himself. It happened 
when one morning Victoria issued around the lit- 
tle curled stage-stairs, unsuspectedly, in the midst 
of the usual waiting dozen, which included Al- 
drich. Over her shoulder, like an inept and pol- 
lenless Mephisto, bent the lyric tenor to whisper 
in her ear, but too audibly, as she descended: 
“ Fraulein Amerika, so, so! Still does the home 
capital the military shoulder-padding outdo.” 
Though Aldrich had long since learned minor 
laws of professional license, he could not be blunt 
to one significance in this chaffery. He was, to a 
degree, financially independent of his literature: 
was he, then, defined for her more in terms of his 
money than of his work? 

Such a thought must make its slight recoil. 
But Victoria was upon him ere it stamped itself, 
and she gave him her hearty Servus, and inquired 
after his “ Gesundheit.” 

“ I can answer more cheerfully outside, where 

305 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


these lyric tenors are not,” replied Aldrich, in- 
audibly save for her. 

They drifted out under the arches to the Ring- 
strasse. Out from the doors of cafes lining this 
thoroughfare filtered aromas. The sound from 
within was deadened through plates of heavy 
glass, huge blank windows, glazing and framing 
the iridescent pantomime inside. Hosts of wine- 
sippers, beer-bibbers, ice-tasters, all at leisure with 
Epicurus, Slavic, and South-Teutonic physiog- 
nomies in swarth zigzag, sat motionless, or read 
or wrote in their seats, or recounted, or exclaimed. 
It was a complication of aimlessness, a part of 
which, at least, would fructify in symphonic 
poems, or colored statues with glass eyes, or verse 
for green and purple interlinings. The cafes of 
every continental city like Vienna are as phos- 
phate for the rich soil of modern secessionistic 
tendency. Then, too, the wide promenade was 
a replenisher, drawing many toward it, as it had 
drawn Victoria and Aldrich, to deposit a percent- 
age of them inside the plate-glass rectangles. 
Along the Ring moved groups of Jewish women, 
exaggeratedly moded, but on the whole less so 
than in certain portions of Fifth Avenue. Here, 
as elsewhere, complexion and features gave each 
other the lie, in women of bleached aquilinity. 
Women of portliness, much compressed (and or- 
306 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


namented with a prominence to nullify such com- 
pression), led very beautiful dark-eyed children, 
like deep garnets, sending purity of color through 
thronged wrought brass. 

“ The eyes of these people make one dizzy/’ 
said Aldrich ; “ they have so much see in them. 
In comparison, our American eyes have merely a 
quantity of look ” 

“ I can quote a case in point,” said Victoria. 
“ In fact — speak of angels ! The case in point is 
upon us ! ” 

The Ober-Leutnant von Zonsk passed them as 
she spoke, and bowed low. 

Aldrich raised his voice to a palpable lightness. 

“ That is the man who is the best part of him- 
self — have I guessed? ” 

The pause was an emphasis. 

“ You don’t understand,” she protested. “ It’s 
not he exactly. It’s the thing he represents: a 
thing so pervasive hereabout, that he sometimes 
seems to embody it like an ideal. Take, for in- 
stance, his music. He is a soldier, by profession, 
and yet he plays his amateur violin with more tell- 
ing conviction than I can put into my staple article 
of a voice.” 

“ Haven’t you yet learned how that comes 
about ? ” 

“ You mean ” 


307 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ Haven’t you yet learned how there’s nothing 
so difficult as to do a thing well, once you’ve be- 
gun to do it ideally? That is the lasting advan- 
tage of the dilettante over the genius.” 

Yet Victoria had set him squirming again. She 
tightened the undercurrent with a remark final to 
their present theme : 

“ Howsoe’er that may be, I can’t help some- 
times feeling that like you, with your play, I need 
some sort of break-loose initiative. I wish, some- 
times, I might sing like that Herr Ober’s fiddle- 
bow. He brings a big, exultant tone, unobstruct- 
edly — from his circulation.” 

“ You’ve hit upon the secret of one conception 
of Temperament at last,” said Aldrich. “Tem- 
perament may be defined as circulation.” 

This was but a casual eddy, and Aldrich had 
launched himself full-sail toward the purpose for 
which he now felt his whole life had but tended. 


XXIV 


SURRENDER AND TRIUMPH 

As the days followed, Aldrich began to know 
himself as an embodiment, of a sort differing in- 
deed from that of the Herr Ober-Leutnant, but 
related to it in the pros and cons of Victoria’s 
measurements. He was, he could see, for her, an 
ambition, or even an aspiration : though his mod- 
esty would have vetoed, and she was responsible. 
This American Girl had been many years out of 
America, yet she was conjecturing a social weight 
he might command, in a country where she 
had first foreseen herself broadening her own 
standing. 

He knew that no subsequence can quite efface 
those dreams which have reigned in a doll’s-house, 
when any woman was a child. He might easily 
be for her a symbol and code from this first ideal, 
garnished with illusions from a later vanity, with 
a strong influence in reminiscent moods, weaken- 
ing the emancipation she yet sought. He both 
lured and obstructed. 


309 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


It was in the face of much, therefore, that his 
project lifted him bodily, with a sense of daring: 
he would try to marry, without direct or imme- 
diate interference in her work. There was the 
other side, too, in the outcome with his mother 
and sisters in New Hampshire. But, for misgiv- 
ings, New Hampshire was a far target. He reck- 
oned, not illogically, that having defied, by his 
play, as well as by his verse, some of it, his mar- 
riage with a singer could but further illuminate 
the family tree for its evening festivity. It was 
an old tree, after all. Upon it was sunset. Al- 
ready the shadows were gathering. The situa- 
tion took on a relish of rich lanterns hung beneath 
his elms. Its most vital flaw lay, after all, in the 
two forgiving brothers, and they were but as in- 
visible specks in a scheme glowingly secession- 
istic. 

One fortifying effect of something in Victoria’s 
methods was everywhere in evidence. Every one 
in Vienna had the habit of referring to her as 
“ good ” (“ anstandig ” was the word they used). 
Victoria had always too much realized that her- 
self. How often had she declared, in no very 
round-about terms, how it disturbed her whether 
it were better to be good or not ! And sometimes 
still she spoke of it. 

“ But how do you get around the facts in the 
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THE EMOTIONALIST 


case? ” she said one morning. They were curving 
their way in small steps through the longer route 
of the Volks Garten. “ Take any of the good 
ones ” 

“ Are any of them good ? ” 

“ I don’t refer to moral goodness. Quite the 
opposite. That’s just the point. I mean, take 
any of the successful singers, say at the opera here 
— the ones that can tumble headlong into their 
parts, and astonish the whole auditorium into the 
keeping of the claque ” 

“ Well,” he filled in her pause, “ that’s one dra- 
matic ideal ! ” 

“ I can’t make up my mind yet. What I do 
know is that the applause is very nice, and that 
my deep tones won’t wring a great deal of it out 
of this public. The Frau Baronin used to say 
they were all right. I don’t have to tug at my 
chest to get them, to be sure — but when they 
sound out they don’t tug at anybody else’s. 
What’s the matter ? ” 

“ I think I catch the theory toward which 
you’ve always thought yourself drifting,” said 
Aldrich. “ It’s tolerably old. It surmises that 
no good woman can possibly become great until 
she makes up her mind to reform.” 

“ Now you’re flippant again ! It is very pos- 
sible that no good woman ever gets as much 
3ii 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


applause as she might get if she weren’t so 
good.” 

He whisked down a leaf with his cane. “ You 
have the floor,” he suggested. 

“ I have the stage in ‘ Aida ’ to-morrow night ; 
then my point may be clearer. Last week, when 
I had that hoarseness, you saw the weather-beaten 
old second contralto do my part in this opera. 
You’ve not yet seen me. Wasn’t she quite sat- 
isfactory? Did she do it badly? ” 

“ Irrefutably so,” Aldrich agreed. “ The 
point’s the same again. She’s hardly good 
enough to do anything badly.” 

Whereat Victoria was undecided whether to 
keep on presenting her case honestly to her friend, 
or to cover the whole matter, evermore, with that 
wry smile he was so insistently obtruding into it. 
Had she not herself defined for him in the very 
beginning his temperamental respectability ? And 
had he not been chosen, if fortuitously, as her 
American symbol ? He was more. He was be- 
come the final bond unto the dreams behind her. 
Throughout its stretch, any life reproduces, from 
time to time, its vanished periods in instant 
flashes. At this moment, the pendulum of what 
she most desired for herself had swayed well to- 
ward what she knew Aldrich stood eager to place 
at her command. 


312 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ It’s just this,” she began; “ I’m incompetent. 
My engagement here, as you know, was an acci- 
dent, or, at most, a coincidence ” 

“ Are not most things one or the other ? ” 

“ Well, don’t interrupt, sir ! I can sing well 
enough, sometimes, but there’s still the unattain- 
able bigger half. Whenever I go through a part 
I can’t banish the general notion of a boarding- 
school girl doing a stunt — or when I can, the 

Direktor can’t ” 

“ No limit to individual conception! ” 

“If you do that again I may be angry ! At 
the rehearsals he keeps dinning, forever, ‘ let go ! 
Furman — let go ! ’ And then he tells me not to 
lace the part, not to act on stilts, and so forth. 
But I can’t let go. And the lacing is tight, and 
the stilts pitchy, and I keep remembering that I 
must be intense, temperamentvoll, first and fore- 
most for these Germans temperamentvoll , tempe- 
ramentvoll! ” 

Her voice had arisen to a serio-comic quaver 
of despair. “ Ach Gott,” she said, “ it’s because 
there are hovering angels from somewhere on the 
right side of me, where the devil, on the wrong, 
appears to deal in the particular magic for which 
I’ve been searching.” 

“Will he offer fair compact? . I refer to the 
devil.’ , 


21 


313 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ Probably not. That was my original con- 
clusion at least. But ” 

“ It’s a false logic, a shallow reasoning.” Al- 
drich was now earnest to the point of fanaticism. 
“ It’s not your own, moreover, though these phi- 
losophers of limelight and percussion instruments 
are doing their best to drum it into you. I’ll 
admit that a tendency toward the Permanent 
Brimstone has been sometimes notable in women 
with fine artistic faculties, and that thereby 
they’ve sung a good Carmen. I’ll even admit 
that there may be some psychic bond of sympa- 
thy between the devil and the talent that consum- 
mates his ends in private, while making them pic- 
turesque in public. But you can’t artificially es- 
tablish this connection. A naturally honest, lim- 
ited woman, adopting the methods of an inher- 
ently lax though gifted woman, will likewise be- 
come lax ” — he paused — “ and more conspicu- 
ously lacking in gifts.” 

“ In other words,” said Victoria, “ a woman 
can’t act like a born actress, by simply behaving 
like one ! ” 

“ Sad enough — even though your ‘ born 
actress ’ may, sometimes, and particularly on the 
stage, behave very much like a woman who can’t 
act.” 

Victoria had easily divined the undercurrent. 

3H 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


She caught all the piquantry of his mistrust. Im- 
plicit faith in a woman is not the final intensifies 
The American Girl believed she knew her Amer- 
ican well enough to divine how in a measure his 
infatuation for her was directly dependent upon 
his lack of confidence. Possibly she had never 
been more sincere than when, in all candor, she 
took the insincere attitudes which he might 
fathom, thereby growing more covetous of her 
actualities. Aldrich stood toward her in pecu- 
liarly clear relation of one who apprehended, yet 
whose apprehension, being of the reason pure and 
simple, had always been as naught before her 
magnetic appeal. Recognizing her primarily for 
what she was, infatuated secondarily by what the 
law of her nature could not avoid being, he yet 
strained against his susceptibility toward what 
she was not. Herein was Victoria amused and 
fortified. Out of her woman’s deduction she 
framed a law unto Aldrich that he might at any 
time be defeated, confusing what he wished a 
thing to be with what he thought he ought to 
wish it to be. 

These things she read with considerable accu- 
racy. Where she did him injustice was in her 
failure to recognize his readiness for considerable 
sacrifice toward his convictions. A man’s na- 
ture, itself, can’t be said to be the whole of him. 

315 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Indeed, Aldrich represented a family in which 
for many generations it had been a minor part. 
It is precisely in this non-recognition that the in- 
vincible feminine may sometimes fail, where it 
unfailingly divines. 

All issues were dropped when the two of them, 
passing out by one of the garden entrances, 
emerged upon the openness of foliage, light, and 
architecture, as though Vienna’s Ring should 
brim embellishment upon the world, a foam 
upon the champagne of the humanity taking its 
path. 

“ This is one place, at least, where the Eternal 
Brimstone, if we must be misanthropic, takes on 
the hue of Blessed Redemption,” said Aldrich, 
expanding his chest. 

She was silent, but he felt her responsive- 
ness. 

“ You like the life here, don’t you? ” 

“ I can’t quite make up my mind.” 

Yet she lifted her head. Her step, suddenly 
springy, conveyed a sense of having bounded from 
rock to rock. 

“ You know I’m independent of my work,” he 
said, reminded only for an instant of the lyric 
tenor, with his tell-tale designation. “ If I might 
ever hope to be your helpmate, I believe I could 
add my little to the detail of your life, elaborated 
316 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


as it is already. I might even try to give you a 
taste of another sort of success, should you tire 
of this sort. I should try hard/’ 

Still she said nothing. 

“ You may live here and sing, though, if you 
like — as long as you like. We’ll have the cos- 
tumes for your roles all especially designed and 
made wherever they best know how. It must 
hurt you to wear those makeshifts: the Binoka’s 
old dress to-morrow evening, for instance, as 
Amneris. We could make you an * integral 
part ’ of an indefinite sumptuousness. You’d like 
that ? ” 

“ To-morrow’s costume has been cut down to 
me, and is not a bad fit. I’ll be robing myself in 
tradition, exteriorly.” Her smile flashed. “ But 
I’ll be violating every precedent when I marry 
you.” 

He felt proud, agitated, uncertain. Success- 
fully had he anchored himself at his ultimate. 
For this had all things happened. 

“ With you for a husband, and your money, 
and your work, and your growing fame,” she said, 
“ I’ll be properly disposed of at the final lap. The 
story can’t be better rounded.” 

“ Unless it be given me to round your happi- 
ness in the mold of a heart — my heart.” 

“I’m to keep on singing; but eventually I’ll 

317 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


do it so coldly that I’ll stop of my own accord. 
Isn’t it that way ? ” 

He was a little startled. “ Not exactly that. 

I think I’ve explained ” 

“ You’re the dear, wise Archie! ” 

He thrilled unspeakably to the charm of her. 


XXV 


FROM THE STAGE DOOR, THROWN SUDDENLY WIDE 

That Victoria, her engagement with Aldrich 
being perpetrated, should appear to settle herself 
to a disregard of it, was but characteristic. An 
established thing is liable to lose outline and seg- 
regation in the mind. Through its very famil- 
iarity it may suffer a species of extinction on the 
thought. Victoria had to admit that she found 
it difficult to feel very different from the way 
she had always felt. Disposed of at first lap, or 
not, there was still much to be worked out, and 
little to alter. 

She sang her Amneris, however, more with the 
feeling that she was doing it especially for Al- 
drich, and, as usual, when it was over she felt the 
first fine satisfaction that she had been able to do 
it at all, succeeded a few hours later by the bit- 
terness that she had not done it better. A word 
came from the Direktor expressing terse pleasure 
in the improvement noted, and more confidence 
in what he foresaw she would some day accom- 

3*9 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


plish. As a piece of thoughtfulness, Victoria was 
touched by this, but the reservation sent a great 
sigh through a mood now becoming attuned to 
first details of triumph. They were details so 
early and uncertain. And remembering Aldrich, 
and Aldrich’s standards, she wondered if she were 
not compromising destiny in a direct set at what 
destiny might be compelled to turn from in sheer 
boredom. 

“ I’m doing the commonplace, sensible thing,” 
she thought. “ There’s no need of mounting — 
or is it descending? — into crimson glory, when 
you can find it substituted in a well-walled garden 
of cabbage roses.” 

The thought produced a sulkiness which she 
dismissed as unreasoning. She liked Aldrich. 
She was sincerely convinced that he held the pass- 
port toward the unquestionably higher side of 
everything. She could not permit herself to lose 
sight of that. Yet still she yearned, dimly, to- 
ward the thrill of pure tentativeness unbegotten 
by aught he had to offer. Still the old contest 
waged: the plainly desirable with the vaguely 
longed-for; the definite, without friction, with the 
potential, which 

“ You’ll merely have to call it respectability 
versus individuality ” — she would interrupt her- 
self, with determination to get the truth of this 
320 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


side boldly enough to offset that of any other. 
“ But I suppose there’s no individual case in which 
individuality does not tempt.” 

To the self-suggestion, “ individuality,” there 
recurred always the type of the older contralto, 
who was also a soprano, (at a pinch), who often 
sang Victoria’s Amneris and many of her other 
parts, and whom Vienna preferred. With her 
agile, fat body, and her huge wobbly voice, care- 
less of all limitation, this secondary contralto, 
this Fraulein Freeh, could express what to them 
was the symbolism of seventy chaotic instruments 
in the orchestra; that was why they preferred her. 
To Victoria, it was an argument inspiring in 
phases, if disagreeable in others. As its natural 
complement arose the perpetual military whiff 
from the standing place in the back of the 
parterre, where the officers were granted free 
access. 

Aldrich said to her: “You are so evolved 
along your own lines — I constantly find myself 
repeating a formula : * This woman accepts you 
as a new and difficult condition in her further 
progress ’ ! I should like to justify your accept- 
ance, dear ” 

“Where is the doubt?” She perceived it in 
him. 

“ In New England, I suppose — in the keeping 

32 1 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


of the dust once shaken over me from the 
generations.’’ 

“ And you fear it’s in your eyes. Now, don’t 
you? ” 

“ Not there; not that ! But I can estimate your 
own fear, dear, for that voice of yours, should I 
unwittingly make you breathe too much of it.” 

“ Oh, don’t let that worry you,” she reassured. 
" As long as I can stand it, you can, I guess.” 

“ Yes,” he replied. “ I can do that.” 

She looked at him quizzingly. 

“ And yet,” she said, “ I wouldn’t always swear 
to it ! Well, anyway, let’s be good and make up.” 

This was about as near as they could get to a 
lovers’ quarrel; it seemed to him sometimes pre- 
monitory that they couldn’t do better. 

At the opera the Direktor had been so pleased 
with her last Amneris, that he announced a re- 
vival of “ Orpheus und Eurydike,” and bade Vic- 
toria be ready for immediate rehearsals. Aldrich 
was, of course, the first to hear of it, but the an- 
nouncement was made by Victoria herself at the 
Pension dinner. “ They’re going to give ‘ Or- 
pheus ’ at last,” she told them. “ And I’m to try 
it.” 

“ You can’t lose us,” enthused Frau Heincke, 
standing guard behind Victoria’s chair. “ We 
Americans are people in the whole earth! Frau- 
322 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


lein Furman is the best Sangerin they’ve got at 
the opera, and they find it out.” 

The ensuing interested discussions among the 
boarders were in the end a unanimous decision 
to send a Dienstmann to the theater to purchase 
tickets for all the boarders, who would go in a 
body. 

So Victoria sang the classic Orpheus, made 
over into tone by the almost equally classic Gluck : 
the greatest role she could, as mere contralto, ever 
hope to sing. Long before coming to Vienna she 
had been drilled in the part, thoroughly, even ex- 
aggeratedly, by the worn, forceful, tyrannical, 
hysterical woman in Dresden, to whom she owed 
every syllable of her artistic training, as she owed 
what inner breath might be in her dramatic in- 
tuition : the woman whose price had not been in 
gold, but in perfect liberty to insult and extol, 
belittle and magnify, by turns. Victoria had 
wielded her own weapon, however, with covert 
security, when the fact got beyond the first stage 
of her astonishment. She had been able to 
avenge herself at any time by merely letting her 
interest lag. She had learned to mean to succeed, 
without meaning that the Frau Baronin should 
be too invariably sure she meant to. The atti- 
tude had kept the balance adjusted. It had kept 
the Frau Baronin under sanitary restraint. The 
323 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


one time the Frau Baronin had been thoroughly 
frightened was when the American Girl had 
threatened to go back home. 

There was no such consolation now, for she 
had shouldered the burden of her own proof. 
Victoria longed to be able to regard this oppor- 
tunity of singing Orpheus as the termination of 
her first epoch, and the initiation of her second. 
The part arose to a flood of song on her imag- 
ination the morning of the day set for the per- 
formance, and grew apace toward noon. She 
actually longed for her toga, and the opening 
minors, and the pendulum swing of the baton 
urging them to her wail above the funeral urn. 
Then, as evening drew nearer, courage gasped 
for breath, and went out completely, in a heavy 
cinder-heap of personalism and mistrust. She 
was all at once weighted to earth, with herself; 
with old, odd traditions of incompetence in her- 
self. It seemed incredible to her that she could 
know just what to do, just how to do it, just when 
to come in. 

She didn’t, she decided — the cold sweat start- 
ing from her forehead. It was all an illusion, 
too. Those things all came from magic realms 
to which she was a parvenu, if not an outsider. 
She was Victoria Furman, of the Utica foremost 
church choir. Her brothers were of the type to 
324 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


contentedly sing Gospel hymns in tonic, dominant, 
and subdominant chords without modulations, by 
the hour, each Sunday. They enjoyed it. She 
herself had enjoyed it. And now she was expect- 
ing of herself some conception of a nebulous 
quiver, vibrating down from the heart of the 
childhood of man, into the new youth of art — 
the lute of Orpheus, divinely attuned at length 
after ages of experimentation, during which the 
world had sought his heritage. Her whole career 
soured on her fancy and jested at itself. 

Under such conditions, any sort of inspired 
rendering was out of the question. She could 
only resolutely force her mood as much as possible 
from her mind, try to keep intact her belabored 
thinking faculty, and make the best of a bad mat- 
ter. Her nationality mocked her again, in echoed 
upbraidings from the vocal-lessons days. “If I 
were from Italy, or Poland, or Hungary, or Rus- 
sia, she thought, “ this particular kind of misgiv- 
ing would be impossible. This isn’t artistic ner- 
vousness. It is what the old Lubke used to be 
always calling it. It is a rabid and malignant 
form of American horse-sense — only that — noth- 
ing else ! ” 

But Victoria had overdiscounted her ability to 
identify the music of Gluck. What she must 
sing was all uncontaminate and grammatical. In 
325 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


her interpretations of Orpheus, a discriminate 
listener would think he perceived true calculations, 
in the spirit of oratorio, intelligent, majestic. As 
always were her phrases rounded. As ever, her 
tones poured calmly, widely out, with big bulks 
seemingly left in the sources from which they 
had come. 

Aldrich had even more than his ordinary en- 
thusiasm, and did his best toward swelling a cas- 
ual applause which clattered down from high be- 
neath the roof and grew shapeless in the space 
between. When with the Eurydike of the per- 
formance she came before the curtain, he moved 
into the aisle, and she caught his eye, thus en- 
abling him to appropriate her nod. The smile, 
across the lights, gave permeate warmness to the 
figure- woman, in the guise of a demi-god, until 
now intangible, with boundlessness between. 

Later at the stage door he found the Ober- 
Leutnant von Zonsk, with whom Victoria had 
found opportunity for making him acquainted 
soon after the first encounter on the Ring. The 
officer’s long mantle wrinkled about him, diagon- 
ally, in the November wind. Within it he was 
quiet. As Aldrich observed him, he felt a greater 
sense of the weight of the man than hitherto. 
The force of this Austrian was, after all, military 
and disciplined, and Hungarian ancestral vein- 
326 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


ings were ballasted. Lacking Victoria’s allevia- 
tion, Aldrich felt inched and counter-numbered. 

“ You also await ? ” 

“ The issue of victory — ja,” replied the officer. 

“ Appropriate to your calling. But her per- 
formance may be reckoned a triumph inasmuch 
as she didn’t offend.” 

The elision sank. 

Unforewarned, the Ober-Leutnant shook him- 
self upward, for a greater loquaciousness. “ But 
you Americans are all too conscientious,” he ob- 
served. “ No one can be dramatic and be con- 
scientious.” 

“ It’s a dull old world,” Aldrich admitted. 

Beamwise borne on the light from the stage- 
door, thrown suddenly open, Victoria’s chiffon 
and fur and magenta, interrupted. Her mouth 
was tightly wound about with a lace scarf. She 
beckoned to them both radiantly, ere hurrying 
across the pavement to her carriage. 

“ Get in, both of you,” she said. “ This drive 
home will give you leisure to tell me all I want 
to know about it, before the general competition 
at the boarding-house — bless their hearts ! ” 

The light in the droschky was a mere glimmer 
from the Ring outside, but Aldrich thought she 
looked toward the Ober-Leutnant, as though his 
were the opinion she had waited for. 

327 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ Ja,” shrugged the officer, “ Orpheus was a 
little frightened ! ” 

“ What did you expect of him in Hades ? ” 
Victoria pouted. 

“ My view is grossly dilettanteish,” said Al- 
drich. “ I couldn't perceive that you were fright- 
ened and I thought you magnificent." 

“ Thank you, boy. That is good of you." 
She grasped his hand from under her cloak in 
the dark of the carriage. 

“ Ei, ja,” agreed the Ober-Leutnant, tardily. 
“ It is all coming. It begins to be almost — 
already.” 

“ Oh,” cried Victoria, with sudden intensity 
of interest. “Does it? Do you really mean 
it?” 

“ You can be very great one time,” said the 
Ober-Leutnant. “ But first you will tire of being 
frightened.” 

“ ‘ Tire of being frightened ! ' ” quoted Victo- 
ria, inspecting the phrase. “ ‘ Tire of being 
frightened ! ’ — that’s a new light. I've put it in 
a thousand ways to myself, but never in that 
one.” She sighed deeply. Once or twice before, 
as they talked, she had sighed. 

Aldrich had learned this sigh, now. It came, 
as he had to recognize, from some place in real- 
ization where genuine things lie lurking. 

328 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Back upon him with a sharp pang came his in- 
trospection. He was loving Victoria with an 
enigmatical love that denied, to falseness, his 
critical faculty in testimony to something that 
faculty was missing. Could he be loving in 
her the very thing his influence might bind more 
closely into naught? He had fancied his faith 
was in Victoria as an unconsciously ideal artist, 
elevated by the pure mentation of her talent above 
the promiscuous public, which, whatever else it 
might require, surely exacted sensation — would 
as surely exact sensation forever. It was the in- 
fluence of this faith that had made easy his agree- 
ment that she should remain in opera; and she had 
pointed out, not without divination, that he had 
done so hopefully, foreseeing her eventual con- 
viction of a wrongly chosen path. 

He had, in short, wished her for a wife, on an 
unconfessed prediction of ultimate entire posses- 
sion for him, through failure for her. 

Yet within her was the call which he had a 
growing sense of stifling: a longing toward a 
wider ethical and emotional freedom. A fear 
of what he might be doing smote him with abrupt 
keenness. Justice, chivalry, a sense of fair play, 
seemed involved. If it should in this case tran- 
spire to be Pallas, in little golden flames, and not 
merely a woman in danger of burning! How 

329 


22 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


more than absurd, then, how criminally destruc- 
tive, must be his hair-cloth blanket, woven in the 
looms of New England. 

Away with such indecisions! Away with this 
miserable analysis forever plunging out in the 
dusk of thought on bat-wings of too ready emo- 
tionalism. Must the chance and incipient hurt — 
vague loneliness, vague jealousy — forever return 
upon him, magnified to a torturing goad in a hun- 
dred syllogisms, or metaphors, or symbolisms? 
Must he be forever as an exposed battery, catch- 
ing every unwired ray? Here he, too, was fall- 
ing into mental cadence with a murmur from the 
cafes on the Ring: the philosophy which men 
made for the quieting of conscience in the pres- 
ence of their mistresses, the sophism of “ lib- 
erty ” which they coined to the justification of 
sleep-squandered sunlight, and cigarette fumes, 
and absinthe, and wanton hours. 


XXVI 


SURRENDER ONCE AGAIN, AND SACRIFICE 

The American guests assembled in the dining- 
room of the Pension Heincke raised a cheer upon 
Victoria’s appearance, following her performance 
of Orpheus, which they had all witnessed. Frau 
Heincke sought no curb for her enthusiasms, and 
was literally vociferous, upon Victoria’s neck. 

“ You’re so kind, all of you,” Victoria said, 
gently extricating from muscular arms, and rest- 
ing her weight with both hands on one end of the 
table, as she bent facing the company. “ Your ap- 
plause helped me more than I can say, over at 
the theater — here it — it quite overcomes me — be- 
cause — I can never feel I deserve it at all. I do 
thank you — and — I do hope I’ll come nearer being- 
worth it some time.” 

“ What a dear ! ” murmured somebody from 
far in the background, but with penetrating con- 
viction. 

“ And you just wait a year,” cried a young 
physician from Oregon. “ You’ve just begun. 
But you’re great already — don’t forget that.” 

33i 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ I thought you were simply glorious as Am- 
neris week before last,” ventured a piano student, 
blonde and fragile, her face heavy with ceaseless 
keyboard drudging. “ You’ve something about 
you so strong, so repressed.” 

“ That’s the terrible part of it,” cried Victoria. 
“ It looks like repression, but it isn’t. It’s what 
I haven't — not what I’m holding back. They’re 
like sunrise and sunset, you know — they look 
alike until you know the direction, or until you 
notice there’s no dew, or no birds singing.” 

They were now all seated and neglecting the 
prepared refreshment, eagerly hanging upon her 
words. 

“ You’d suit fine for Wagner’s operas,” an- 
nounced a candidate for Ph.D., whose Alma 
Mater (the Methodist University of Palingtown) 
had given him the confidence of his authority. 
He pronounced the composer’s name with an 
American a, richly flat and drawn. Aldrich 
winced. 

For the entire remainder of the evening no one 
spoke of anything that did not pertain, either 
directly or indirectly, to the countrywoman who 
had distinguished herself : Victoria Furman. 
Such is the comely outline of success even in its 
initial stages. Each woman in the Pension had 
long since acquired the habit of regarding her 
332 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


as an especially intimate friend; or, at all events, 
they would speak of her as such when they re- 
turned to America. One or two assured her how 
grand it was to find a true woman, ready to exert 
a purifying influence in a profession that so 
needed it. 

After all the others had departed, Aldrich and 
the Ober-Leutnant still sat with Victoria at the 
depleted supper board. A maid was removing 
the dishes between rubbings at her eyes. 

“ In the Pension is a true imported atmos- 
phere/’ said Victoria, sitting lazily back in her 
chair, and drawing circles on the table-cover. 

“ Fraulein, Fraulein!” 

The Ober-Leutnant’s voice had a strange note, 
well-nigh reproach, or it might be, pleading. His 
attitude brought to the front a recklessness which 
might now be seen to defy odds. Aldrich noted 
how his hand took an unconscious grope out on 
the table in the direction of Miss Furman’s elbow, 
and was spotted, white and red. His dog-brown 
eyes lurked their alert sleepy twinkle to an ex- 
ceptional degree. 

“ You’re tired, Victoria — you must be,” said 
Aldrich. He was pleading, too. He was see- 
ing so clearly. 

“ I must be, of course,” chimed Victoria, in 
audible petulance. She, too, was reckless, and 

333 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


weary, and disappointed. She was hardly aware 
of Aldrich’s presence. 

The Ober-Leutnant spoke with assumption, 
which recked of naught: 

“ An artiste cannot treasure conscience just as 
do all the others. She must reconstruct it after 
especial laws.” 

Victoria acquiesced. She thought there was 
a great deal in this; that matters of duty, and 
ideal, with one who took it upon herself to inter- 
pret emotion for ordinary folk, must differ from 
those of ordinary folk. She argued her point, 
vindictively, almost fiercely. 

Her conversations with the Ober-Leutnant be- 
ing conducted exclusively in German, Aldrich 
was disinclined toward any extensive share in 
them. He knew the language well enough, but 
was not a virtuoso in it. It chafed him to have 
to feel duller than he actually was, through an 
obstruction of rhetoric. 

Moreover, when the Ober-Leutnant talked at 
all, he did so with a certain effect of neat brevity, 
turning the heavy Teuton polysyllable into light 
tongue-points. The moments sparkled with Vic- 
toria’s conversational abandon under his in- 
fluence. At him, singly, she sprang her small 
themes in showers. 

Aldrich felt himself flaccidly spooking their 

334 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


confluence. This quality he had sometimes sniffed 
at — this “ circulation ” as he had defined it : a 
lustier tang of virility was there where the nature 
took itself positively, without elaboration or syn- 
thesis. He was weaker, to the moment, with the 
ache of formless suggestion. Yet through his 
hurt he could trace a flush of fuller power 
on the girl’s lips — this man beside her in domi- 
nance. 

“ She is right.” The conviction reached him 
with final penetrance. “ She will both sing and 
act some day — some day, when she has paid the 
costs.” 

The officer took his leave at last, in plain per- 
functory recognition of Aldrich’s prior right. 
Then Victoria, as was her wont, extended both 
hands to the other man, but very, very wearily. 

“ Now kiss me, and go, too,” she said. 

“ Yes, yes,” he assented. “ There seems noth- 
ing else to be done.” 

But he kissed her with timid lightness. This 
greeting had never seemed quite his right. In it, 
perhaps more than in aught else to-night, he rec- 
ognized his foreordained casualness with her 
fate: the wildness of the dream he had, first, so 
long refused to acknowledge as a dream, and 
then so long, so self-surrenderingly, refused to 
see as but a dream. 


335 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ Victor-chen , Victor -chen” he said. “ These 
dry drops ! You are for a tropic rain.” 

“ No, no, don’t say that,” she protested, but 
languorously; “ it isn’t fair to either of us.” 

Below stairs a sleepy, half-clad Hausmann re- 
ceived the ten-kreuzer fine and unlocked the outer 
door. Aldrich plunged into the night. The 
wind on the street was strong. Intermittent 
about the lamps were hung rolling curtains of 
dust. It was cold. He drew the chill huskily 
into his lungs. Something stung his perceptive- 
ness, forth and again, with a clear shrill note 
which pierced like anguish, as he caught it. 

Once again, for him as for another, whose face 
arose before him against a sunset, everything 
pointed a one and only way. Fate would confer 
a kindness to the reason when in obverse aspects 
she twice presents her lesson. In equal degree 
his part in it was parallel, and culminate and 
clear. He felt its decision and met it laboringly. 

He tried to view the situation in as many dif- 
ferent lights as possible, not to nurse his misery, 
but the rather to attain the universality of it. In 
this way he sought to numb himself after an old 
habit. 

“ I suffer,” he reasoned. “ There is nothing 
to be done about it. Until it exhausts itself by 
processes of nature in a quarter-hour, in a half- 

336 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


hour, in a half-day, this suffering must continue. 
Nothing I can do can aid or alter it. I am con- 
fronted with one insignificance, or many, one 
triviality, or many, which reminds me of the par- 
ticular self, appointed me by the law of things, 
whatever it may be — and my being revolts irre- 
sistibly, uncontrollably, leaving in a result the one 
immutable, unalterable fact, that I suffer. There 
is for the moment no thought to aid me, no scheme 
devised, or desirable, to help me, no possible ces- 
sation save through the natural law of change — 
that quasi-mutation of time which produces an- 
other I, to supplant this down-dragging thing — 
this I, of this helpless moment. I suffer, I might 
just as well face it — and wait.” 

Reaction devitalized him next morning, as ex- 
pected, to the mere aversion of self. His position 
of the past few weeks produced in him a more 
nauseate sense of artificiality than had either of 
the three books which he had successively written 
and as successively grown beyond. 

It may be possible that in certain taut natures, 
every thrill recoils back to distended conceptions 
of sincerity. The cloister cry of the monk re- 
doubles upon him after his garden dream under 
the Heavens. 

Aldrich wrote the letter he felt he must write, 
and he wrote it without hesitation. 

337 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Victoria, Dear: Your destiny is far worthier of you 
than I. I think I have somehow known this all along 
without being aware that I knew. And I have also 
known, as you have known, that in me lies not the influ- 
ence of its nurturing. You wish still, as you have always 
wished, to find your own way into it, dauntlessly. It is 
for me to make outward recognition of the wish before 
you are compelled to. If by any possibility I might be 
even a little wrong — but I would not unwarrantedly 
cherish a hope false to the greatness I await of you, con- 
fidently, and which I shall share with the world as a 
recompense. 

Faithfully, 

Archibald Aldrich. 

He waited twenty- four hours beyond the time 
for his letter’s delivery, in the undefined hope 
to which he had alluded. Then perceiving the ac- 
ceptance and agreement of her silence, he left 
Vienna without an unnecessary good-by. 


XXVII 


finale: walkuren calls and the all- 
surmounting SKY 

There was, however, a kind of dignity given 
to Aldrich’s unwillingness to filch an affair from 
Providence. It lay in the diminution of years 
succeeding. Their impetus seemed altered ; 
though their activities only increased proportion- 
ately. Non-committal years, three of them, they 
glide into the proportions of nonchalance with 
circumstance as Aldrich traversed it, looking lit- 
tle to right or left, because there appeared to be 
little to see. Through the episode he became 
more the poet, in some ways, that he was eternally 
more the humanitarian, and, in trite consequence, 
more the humorist, with some power of eliminat- 
ing emotional stress where it could but encumber. 

Passing of necessity, and inattentively, through 
this trio of years succeeding his departure from 
Vienna, the rounding point arises when he is 
found returning again. He reappears, as he dis- 
appeared, save for the filling of the police certifi- 

339 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


cate presented to him at his hotel, as to ’ every 
stranger ; and whereon he wrote : 


Archibald Churchill Aldrich 
Private citizen 
Protestant 


(Name) 

(Occupation) 

(Religion) 


(Last residence) New York City 

Following the Dienstmann who carried his 
traps to his room in the Hotel Monopol, he peered 
from the hall window out upon Vienna's Ring. 
He had watched every degree of its rounding, up 
from the station. This street was the essence, the 
over-soul, of the newer city. Through it he was 
feeling his way to the graces of the place : just as 
when he visted Paris he always walked down the 
Avenue de l’Opera, as a first process of incarna- 
tion, or, in London, traced it out z-shaped and in 
sequence, up Oxford Street, down Regent Street, 
and into Piccadilly. 

Sidewise through the Monopol window Aldrich 
saw, at peering, the Opera House, diagonally 
across, a mere square further up. It was, as for- 
merly, a dun-hued stolidity of arches. It looked 
more a temple for Beethoven than for a ballet, 
though its allegoric dances at mid-season filled 
two or three evenings each week; more for the 
monotonous than the secessionistic, though it led 
the opera of German-speaking Europe in a tend- 
ency toward the modern French or the modern 


340 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Italian school; more for reflection than for ro- 
mance, though its scandals were an important 
source of Vienna's supply of small-talk. 

No sooner did Aldrich feel brushed and gloss- 
ened than he walked out, making immediately 
for one of those announcement-bills fastened in 
wire cages to each wing of the opera building. 
He could have secured a newspaper at his hotel, 
and examined the evening offering there. But 
he wished to see this programme in this place. 
Tacked in this manner to its own walls, it had 
an official relish and significance. Its list of 
names seemed, here more than elsewhere, a roll 
of honor — a signet of attainment. 

From the announcement he absorbed, not quite 
impassively, the information he was seeking. The 
evening song-drama was “ Walkiire.” In the 
vertical row, enumerating the warrior maidens, 
he read once, and then again, and then repeatedly, 
still unable to reassure himself, while positive 
there could be no error: 

Briinnhilde Frl. Furman 

This line, with its connecting dots, began to 
dance before his eyes; to multiply; to enlarge, and 
fill the wall until it seemed trumpeted into the 
streets : Briinnhilde — Frl. Furman, Briinnhilde — 
Frl. Furman, Briinnhilde — Frl. Furman! 

341 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


The role of Brunnhilde culminated every dra- 
matic difficulty. Here, at this opera, was a Ka- 
pellmeister, perhaps the mightiest in the world; 
one who had been with the composer, note for 
note, as he had gotten this titanic creation to 
paper; one who was prohibitively intolerant of 
the slightest defection from what the master had 
exacted of it. And here under this Kapellmeis- 
ter’s direction, Victoria was singing it ! 

Not for nothing, then, had Aldrich yielded 
her, when yielding her had seemed like yielding 
himself into nothingness. As he had compelled 
himself, against himself, to see it might be, so was 
it ordained that it must be, to the glory of that 
universalism which was better than self. All was 
well, surely! 

She had sung so little outside Vienna, that he 
had only been able to follow her career in frag- 
ments through the press. Once he had seen her 
engagement with a Fiirst announced, and denied 
immediately as apocryphal and without the slight- 
est foundation. Once he had read of her singing 
the Erda and Fricka roles at Bayreuth — mere 
mention, without comment. Brunnhilde was evi- 
dently local as yet. He could well understand 
that. She was one among all women to let her 
wings get slowly and securely strong. 

He secured, for the evening, one of those more 
342 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


expensive seats which are, as a rule, easy to ob- 
tain. Youth — and enthusiasm sometimes outlast- 
ing youth — buy the Cassa dry of cheaper places 
within an hour after the commencement of the 
sale. They crowd about the entries and line the 
highest galleries, thickening into places where 
nothing can be seen, where the sound of the or- 
chestra itself penetrates only in thin rivulets, be- 
tween human interlinings. They bring the appe- 
tite and unto them is the richness of the nectar. 
But Aldrich did not envy them, despite the fact 
that his seat was choice, and hence, by rational 
supposition, something he’d gotten beyond. His 
delight in the wizard of Bayreuth surmounted 
the circumstance of a five-gulden seat, paid un- 
misgivingly. 

When the weaving of melodic threads began to 
steal out under the outstretched palm of the Ka- 
pellmeister, Aldrich refused to be wound. He 
chose rather to watch the pattern : careful dilet- 
tante that he was. The love of Siegmund and 
Sieglinde, wefted in instrumentation, sighing 
through strings and reedy tubes, he could watch 
enharmonically, melting, reshaping, in new 
forms, ceaselessly. Even so, the thought arose, 
he had watched carvings of clouds in his own 
higher sky, until they had become a mere mechan- 
ical arrangement of winds. Even so, perhaps, 

343 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


had he failed to reflect the higher warmth of a 
fuller love. 

Such musings were now distracting closer at- 
tention. The weaving color drew in and out, 
around, near and far. The gradual overcoming 
of voluntary senses was a process not like that of 
sleep, nor of hypnotism: it seemed, rather, a 
higher alertness. 

Recurrent in a thousand shifts of light the 
theme of longing coiled, incessant, undulating, 
knotting its divine entanglement. He gave it 
possession without further seeking to trace the 
way. His eyes were opened, too, as he felt an 
outgoing of something permeate, satisfactory, 
needing neither account nor explanation. He 
was undergoing a symbol of the unbound love. 
So could he love — now — at such a moment. 

The ascent was sheer to madness, with the tor- 
rent of spring. Poets and dreamers had called 
such moments, living! Forces of the universe 
sagged to the durance of one gigantic thrill ! 

Strange the awakening for him . . . . 

the woman whose calling awaited a love like 
that. . . . 

But the music thundered to the climax of its 
unrestrained passion. The curtain fell; the throes 
stilled on a single shudder from all the instru- 
ments. 


344 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


Up shot the yellow glare that marked shadow 
or wrinkle on every face he might scan with his 
opera-glass — an awakening from an awaken- 
ing. And they smiled, all of them, or else they 
dreamed. Shadow and wrinkle had been forgot- 
ten. 

The next act would bring forward Brunnhilde. 
Aldrich conjectured the moments of the waiting 
into the mood of the woman who was to sing. 
Expectation enveloped time, athrob to all the en- 
ergies of the years concentrated in the attention 
of these passing instants. He had yielded, and 
waited. She had gained the mastery she had 
sought, otherwise the role had surely never been 
allotted to her. She had won the knowing, 
whereby a soul ascends to zenith having seen the 
changes of the all-surmounting sky, from light 
shade to dark shade. What imaginative essence 
from things undergone would pass into the ex- 
hilaration of her Walkiiren’s eagle call? Like 
a refrain, on every separate wonderment, crossed 
the words evoking Gotterdammerung in his fancy : 

Das ein Weib wissend ward. 

And he saw the world-wide flare of Brunn- 
hilde’s torch arise from the bonfire of her yielded 
selves. He heard her voice resound in song, as 
the Gods themselves surrendered unto twilight. 

Das ein Weib wissend ward. 

23 345 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


A ring, too, had been tossed back. 

Pale, chanting Rhine-daughters, who held it: 
fit guardians of a cold gleam stolen from the depth 
of a heritage ! 

There sprang the cry of war and wings from 
the conductor’s baton. The curtain arose, reveal- 
ing Briinnhilde, with her javelin, on the painted 
cliff. Aldrich leaned strainingly forward. An 
inattentive female listener next to him grew ner- 
vous, noting his pallor, which, in the semi-dark- 
ness of the auditorium, was ghastly. She remem- 
bered that there were said to be men who grew 
hysterical, even unmanageable, under the spell of 
enharmonics from the Nibelung. 

Aldrich gazed long and intently, to completely 
satisfy himself there could be no mistake. Finally 
he sank back in his seat. 

The Briinnhilde before him was surely not Vic- 
toria at all. It was another. 

Having settled this point, once and for all, he 
took his neglected opera-glass, and scanned the 
impetuous, pudgy figure on the painted cliff, lei- 
surely. 

No, it was not Victoria. But it was Victoria’s 
old-time substitute, the secondary contralto, an- 
cient standby and makeshift of the Vienna opera, 
for every conceivable role; without whose varie- 
gated talent things might often have gone badly 

346 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


enough. Fraulein Freeh had indeed become as a 
ready oil for troubled waters of epidemic indis- 
positions among the leading singers. 

Aldrich caught everywhere about him the mur- 
mur : “ Wieder abgesaget ” — “ called-off again.” 
After which the public settled itself to the inev- 
itable, and gave the Freeh its undivided attention. 

When the act was over, Aldrich walked out 
into the foyer. He found the official blank, filled 
in with writing, as usual in such cases, hanging 
on the wall. It announced that the role of 
Brunnhilde, owing to a necessary Verurlaubung 
of Frl. Furman, would be sung by Frl. Freeh. 

Aldrich stood before the piece of framed card- 
board. Others paused to read it, from time to 
time, and a group of officers stationed themselves 
near it. 

“ The Furman has the reins a’ bissel ,” said one. 

“ She is wise,” commented another. “ She has 
sung too much s opr an of late.” 

“ No more Isolde for her.” An officer 
shrugged his shoulders. 

“ Divine fire and American oil ! She but es- 
capes in time.” 

“ And a contralto-Isolde ! Nonsense ! ” 

“ They would let her do it again,” said the first 
speaker, “ and will try it for her great farewell 
next month. Until then she will rest ” 


347 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ In Baden. I have heard already : she left to- 
night.” 

“ The Direktion will not let her off,” explained 
another, with an air of inside information. “ But 
she goes, anyway. She says she is tired, and the 
rehearsal yesterday has shown her she cannot 
sing, and if the Direktion will not let her go, she 
will leave without her farewell.” 

“ The Direktion cannot afford that they lose 
her farewell.” 

“ No matter whatever. Our undying Freeh 
grows more lovely as she grows more plpmp. She 
will always sing for us — her Brunnhilde — or her 
Isolde — or her Santuzza.” 

“ Associations hallow our Frech-lein ! ” 

“ Have you heard how the Sammarone 
stubbed her toe? Because it was so awkward 
she will commit suicide ” 

They moved away, carrying with them their 
Viennese raillery and speech, thick with liquids. 
All they had said had increased mystification for 
Aldrich, and a great fear of the possible meaning 
of part of it griped him until he threw it off by 
main power. Whatever he must hear or learn, 
his own episode was past. His three years’ 
schooling must not avail him as nothing. 

A penetrant, excited voice spoke in partial Eng- 
lish at his elbow : 


348 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ Herr Gott, sure l I knew, from the back, 
already. It is the Herr Doktor — the Herr Al- 
drich.” 

He turned to face and greet an old acquaint- 
ance: the Frau Heincke, in regalia attire of black 
lace and spangles, with lace mantilla over her hair, 
and a general manner of disappointed festivity. 
She was accompanied by one of her housemaids, 
in droopily garnished alpaca. 

“ Ach,” she said, “ is it not shame! It is sin! 
Fraulein Furman has promised us the tickets 
for ‘ Walkiire ’ already three weeks, and now 
she don’t sing. I was all dressed to come, when 
I hear she has gone to Baden.” 

“ Is her home still with you? ” 

Aldrich could not have explained why, but, 
hoping against hope, he awaited some affirmative. 

“ Ach, no, no,” sighed the good Hausfrau. 
“ It was long ago not privdt enough. She must 
work and study so much. She went to live at 
the home of the Frau Widow Brunheim — the 
Herr Aldrich has surely heard of her — she was, 
one-time, a great dramatic singer here, and after- 
ward the wife of the composer, who died the year 

the Herr Aldrich left Vienna, and ” 

The Frau Heincke cut herself short with an 
anxiety of having referred to what she perhaps 
should not. 


349 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


“ Yes, yes, I remember/’ said Aldrich. “ But 
what is all this I hear of a farewell ? ” 

“Jesus Maria,” cried the astonished woman, 
“ and you have not heard of that ! You, in your 
America, where they hear of everything! ” 
Aldrich filled in the gap of Frau Heincke’s 
catching new breath from her astonishment, by 
explaining that, in especially arranged cases, 
things might be kept as exaggeratedly still some- 
times, as they were flagrantly heralded at others. 

“ Ach, yes — I forget it has been a* bissel 
privdt. But she will marry a rich man from New 
York who has sold the oil. You know how rich 
they get in New York when they sell the oil. 
Gott, Gott — it is a great pity for Wien. We will 
lose her. Sh6 will live in New York, certain.” 

The bell announcing the last act jangled loudly 
through the foyer, in the corridors, on the marble 
stairways, echoing in all the entrances above and 
below. As not infrequently with Wagnerian 
drama, the wait had been unusually long. 

“ But it was all a romance — and beautiful, 
fine,” rhapsodized the Hausfrau, as they turned 
toward the doors of the parterre. “ All a beau- 
tiful, lovely romance! The man she will marry 
had once pay all the expense, that she must study, 
and before he know sure she is worthy. She 
sings only a year before she send the money he 

350 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


paid, all back. He have paid much money, for 
many talented Madchen to study before; but no 
Madchen had ever sent the money back, and so 
when they meet they love at sight. Auf wieder- 
sehen! Come to the Pension, and see the old 
room where Fraulein spent so many hours. I 
have hate ever to rent it — and would not, if I 
mustn’t.” 

In the darkness of the lowered lights, inside, 
the Hausfrau and her impalpable maid-servant 
turned into their own aisle, leaving Aldrich to 
half-grope his way to his. Out of the vacancy, 
mercifully concealed on his countenance, there 
unraveled a skein of philosophy, shooting down 
from his contracted eyelids to the corners of his 
mouth. His face tightened into a complete smile 
— more, an abandoned grinning from eyebrow 
to chin. He felt hysterical laughter within him 
to a degree requiring yet further control — con- 
trol wrenching his very vitals to the soul of 
him. 

But it would be his last struggle in that sort; 
and even as he writhed he knew it; and, know- 
ing it, was granted accession of strength for it. 

“ Since I yielded her to Art,” he muttered, 
speechlessly to his thought, “ I’ve written an- 
other book, which some call good, and another 
successful play, which most call bad. That’s about 

35 1 


THE EMOTIONALIST 


all. I stood comfortably at the lower stile. Jack 
Gorman sells oil, and the road to his Fifth Avenue 
palace has been climbing work.” 

The hilarity of cloud-borne Walkiiren tan- 
gled his further speculation in prickly chromatics. 


(i) 


THE END 






By ROBERT W. CHAMBERS. 


The Firing Line. 

Illustrated by Will Foster. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 

In this rare, strange story, Mr. Chambers en- 
trances us with the exotic life of Palm Beach, Florida. 
We see the lights at America’s greatest playground 
as clearly as if we were there. We become ac- 
quainted with its actors. We feel and see as they 
do. We learn to respect Malcourt, the villain, and 
to love Shiela, whose love story follows the tempest- 
uous scenes to the Adirondacks, and we are there 
mystified as they so weirdly enter the world of the 
occult. 

“ The book sparkles with bright comedy, beautiful de- 
scriptions of outdoor life, and mirrors to better satisfaction 
than anything heretofore from his pen the author’s remark- 
able characteristics and good qualities." — The Boston Globe. 

“Mr. Chambers is a great novel writer, with a fame 
throughout the English-speaking world. Yet we do not 
think that he has done anything so powerful, so vivid, so 
strong, as his writing in this novel." — Salt Lake Tribune. 

“From the vivid opening of the first chapter to the vivid 
close of the last there is no moment when character is not 
being tested in the crucible of circumstances .... it is a 
warm, full-blooded tale of American life and love." 

— Chicago Record-Herald. 

“Indeed, there rarely has been collected in any story 
such a fascinating company as these who take part in the 
battle of love on ‘ The Firing Line.’ " 

— The Transcript \ Boston , Mass. 

“ One of the most fascinating novels of his many good 
books." — Cleveland Leader. 


D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 


AN UNUSUAL NOVEL. 


Old Wives for New. 

By David Graham Phillips. i2mo. Cloth, 
$1.50. 

The title of Mr. Phillips’ new novel is a daring 
one. The story itself is just as daring, but never- 
theless it rings true. It is a frank and faithful 
picture of married life as it exists to-day among the 
prosperous classes of this country. It is the story 
of a young couple who loved as others do, but 
whose love turns to indifference, and Mr. Phillips 
shows us why their married life was a failure. 

“ Things about women which have never seen the light 
of day before.” — St. Paul Pioneer Press. 

“Comes near being a second Balzac.” 

— Los Angeles Times. 

“One of the most thoroughly interesting books that 
has been written in many a long month.” 

— St. Louis Republic. 


D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 


AN EXTRAORDINARY BOOK. 


The Unofficial Letters of an Official’s 
Wife. 

By Edith Moses. i2mo. Cloth, gilt top, 
$1.50 net. 

This is a volume of actual letters which Mrs. Moses, 
the wife of Professor Moses, wrote from the Philippines to 
her relatives here in the United States. Professor Moses, 
who is connected with the University of California, was one 
of the five members of the first commission, of which Sec- 
retary Taft was the head, sent out by the U. S. Government 
to organize the government of the Philippine Islands. The 
members of this commission were practically the first 
important Americans to go to the Philippines in a peaceful 
and a civil capacity. Mrs. Moses, therefore, saw the social, 
political, and home life in Manila as well as in the provinces 
and the different islands before American civilization had 
entered there to any extent. Her letters, while descriptive, 
have a very definite connection one with the other. They 
describe the arrival at the Philippines, the beginning of life 
there, housekeeping, the seemingly strange methods of daily 
life, servant problems, and so on, in Manila. Nothing like 
these letters has appeared in regard to the Philippine 
Islands at any time. It should be borne in mind, further- 
more, that these letters are not in any way technical or 
having to do with the organization of the Philippine govern- 
ment. They are, as the title suggests, quite “ unofficial” 
letters of a lady who, because of her connection with offi- 
cial circles, saw many things which an ordinary traveler 
never could see. 


D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 


\ 


BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE FIGHTING CHANCE.” 


The Younger Set. 

A Novel by Robert W. Chambers. Illus- 
trated by G. C. Wilmshurst. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 

This is a famous novel of New York society; a 
brilliant picture of American wealth in its romance, 
its sins, its splendors, its divorces and its sports; 
a love story such as only Robert W. Chambers can 
write. It is stronger, tenser, better than the same 
author’s greatest success, “ The Fighting Chance.” 
Richly illustrated by G. C. Wilmshurst. 

“It is brightly told, replete with the wit and sparkle 
and charm that invests everything Mr. Chambers writes. 
It is a delightful sojourn among people one could wish to 
know .” — Kansas City Star. 

“It is written with a freshness and vigor that cannot be 
too much appreciated and praised .” — Salt Lake Tribune . 

“It is the best story Mr. Chambers has ever written.” 

— Cleveland Leader. 

“ The most popular writer in the country has improved 
upon his own very popular ‘ Fighting Chance.’ ” 

— New York World. 


D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 


A MOTOR-BOAT STORY. 


Across Europe in a Motor-Boat. 

By Henry C. Rowland, author of “ In the 
Shadow,” etc. Illustrated by upward of fifty 
sketches. i 2 mo. Decorated cloth, gilt top, $2.00 net. 

This is a delightful narrative of an absolutely 
unique trip. Mr. Rowland and his two friends had 
a motor-boat constructed in London for a seven- 
thousand-mile inland voyage which should circle 
Europe by way of the Seine, the Rhine, the Danube, 
and the Black Sea. The struggles with the motor, 
which develops a degree of perversity almost human, 
the innumerable humorous and exciting incidents, 
and the final terrific adventure which ends the narra- 
tive with a shipwreck in the Black Sea, make it the 
most novel and entertaining book of travel of recent 
years. The talented author is well known through 
half a dozen books and many magazine stories. The 
style of the volume is very attractive. Some fifty 
sketches are sprinkled through the text. 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 


By DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS. 


The Second Generation. 

Illustrated. Cloth, $1.50. 

“The Second Generation ” is a double-decked romance 
in one volume, telling the two love-stories of a young 
American and his sister, reared in luxury and suddenly left 
without means by their father, who felt that money was 
proving their ruination and disinherited them for their own 
sakes. Their struggle for life, love and happiness makes a 
powerful love-story of the middle West. 

* The book equals the best of the great story tellers of all 
time.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer. 

“ ‘ The Second Generation,’ by David Graham Phillips, is not 
only the most important novel of the new year, but it is one of the 
most important ones of a number of years past.” 

— Philadelphia Inquirer. 

“A thoroughly American book is ‘The Second Generation.* 
„ . . The characters are drawn with force and discrimination.” 

— St. Louis Globe Democrat. 

“Mr. Phillips* book is thoughtful, well conceived, admirably 
written and intensely interesting. The story ‘works out’ well, 
and though it is made to sustain the theory of the writer it does 
so in a very natural and stimulating manner. In the writing of the 
J problem novel ’ Mr. Phillips has won a foremost place among our 
younger American authors. ” — Boston Herald. 

“ * The Second Generation ’ promises to become one of the nota- 
ble novels of the year. It will be read and discussed while a less 
vigorous novel will be forgotten within a week.” 

— Spri?ig field Union. 

“ David Graham Phillips has a way, a most clever and convinc- 
ing way, of cutting through the veneer of snobbishness and bringing 
real men and women to the surface. He strikes at shams, yet has 
a wholesome belief in the people behind them, and he forces them 
to justify his good opinions.” — Kansas City Times . 


D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 











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